A new Walking Dead TV spin-off series has just been announced by AMC and is scheduled for a 2015 airdate. It’s a long way away I know but the one thing that time’s going to give us is the room to speculate and predict to our hearts content. And that’s what I’m going to do right now.

For a while now I’ve been thinking of things I’d either do if I were in AMC’s shoes or what I’d like to see the Walking Dead do.

Number 1 – Get out of Georgia.

First off, I have nothing against the great state of Georgia. I’m sure it’s very nice when it’s not infested with zombies. However, I do feel as if the quaint, southern location for the apocalypse has outworn its welcome. The United States is a big place and there are 49 other states I’d like to see combat the zombie apocalypse. The comics used to be set in Georgia, the current TV show is still set in Georgia and the three Walking Dead video game titles are all set in Georgia.

At first Georgia was a good choice for a location as it encapsulates the “everyman/woman” survivor theme which runs throughout the franchise. The Walking Dead has always featured characters who are seemingly normal when we first meet them and often transform throughout the story. The same can be said for the state of Georgia. It’s quiet and it’s unsuspecting but once again, there are many other places it could be set that are just as unassuming as Georgia.

Number 2 – Get out of the United States.

This is a pipe-dream but the idea of a Walking Dead spin-off set in another part of the world excites me. You may remember the season 1 pre-finale of the Walking Dead TV show where Dr. Jennir in the CDC explains how French scientists were close to a breakthrough regarding the zombie virus before contact was lost.

Perhaps we could see the spin-off series center around those particular French scientists? It would certainly be new for the franchise and it would allow us to learn more about the zombies whilst saving the mystery of what exactly caused the outbreak.

Number 3 – Get some fresh new characters.

The Walking Dead as a brand is big enough that people recognize it because of its name and not necessarily its characters. Thanks to The Walking Dead video game released in 2012, it was proven that the series doesn’t have to rely on Rick Grimes and co. to deliver an intense experience with in-depth characters.

The Walking Dead video game only featured two characters from the source material and those were Glenn, the long-running survivor all the way from the very beginning of the franchise. It also saw Herschel the farmer make a brief appearance. Not the cool TV version however, the annoying comics one who never stopped swearing and shouting. However, to truly to paint a picture of a global apocalypse, it’s imperative that this new TV show break away from familiar faces and introduces us to new characters even if the locale is the same.

Number 4 – Get a new time period.

One thing that stood out about Naughty Dog’s, The Last of Us was that it’s set way after the apocalypse. People have adapted to that world, people have been born into it and people live in it, they don’t just survive it.

If you read the comics or watch the TV show you’ll notice how only a year or so has passed since the outbreak. If this new TV show was to really break new ground, the introduction of a new world where the dead truly do rule is one that would really stand out. It would make things so much more desperate and dire. To see a world where these characters have adapted and have learnt to thrive is just so much enticing to me as the viewer. One could argue this would be expensive for AMC but there’s one thing I’ve learnt from watching shows like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, it’s that AMC knows how to make a believable world in their shows.

It also breaks the repetitious cycle of “outbreak – survivors meet survivors – they learn to deal with the apocalypse” that Walking Dead story arcs follow almost religiously.
The Walking Dead is one of my favorite franchises. I had never even heard of the comics before I saw the TV show but ever since I saw that first episode my love for the over-saturated zombie genre was reborn. I’d love to see some changes come from the series though it’s one of the best on television, it needs to pick itself up a bit and remind that I watch it because of how good it is not just because I work night shifts and need something to watch during the day.

Do you have anything to add to this small list? Let me know in the comments below!

Minor spoilers for the previous episode and beginning of this one follow.

As promised, the next episode in the Tyranny of King Washington alternate story arc to Assassin's Creed III has arrived to tell the next part of the story of the heroic Commander Washington's decent into a reputation that has earned him the title of "the Mad King."

The game picks up shortly after the events of the first episode with Connor being rudely awaked in his prison cell by George Washington, Israel Putnam and Benjamin Franklin. Reveling in his catch, George Washington goes off on a villainous speech that seems as if it's been ripped from a "How-to-be-a-bad-guy-for-Dummies" book with Putnam and Franklin sneering in the background like the two sidekicks of Hades from 1997 Disney film Hercules. Washington then orders Connor and the "other savage" to suffer an execution the following day. Obviously, Connor will have to escape. Using his Wolf Cloak, Connor is able to trick the guard into unlocking the cell and from there on, Connor escapes with his fellow captive who turns out to be none other than Kanen'tó:kon, Connors childhood friend. Let the story begin!

The game then funnels Connors escape into a warehouse full of enemy guards that must be dispatched to ensure escape. Less than a few minutes into the game and I was already starting to fume at display of poor AI and stealth mechanics. This particular mission had me attempt it six times before I was able to get it right. You're tasked with clearing the area to escape and then signal Kanen'tó:kon to follow once the guards are killed. Except as soon as a guard see's you trying to be stealthy in your approach, and see you they will, Kanen'tó:kon jumps right out of where he's hiding to attack the enemy unarmed. Connor himself is also unarmed so fighting off the higher enemy classes which are the only guards in the room is tough enough without having to save your friend from being killed. The way the game encourages you do this is by using your Wolf Cloak power which drains your health thus allowing for the enemy to quickly overpower you.

This mission is easily the most tedious in the entire DLC. It's ridiculously ill thought out and will really try the players patience.

You will not do this.

Once the game opened up I was expecting it to get better but sadly this was not the case as The Betrayal will have you running around a small segment of Boston which is tied to a loose and inconsistent story. The city of Boston is not the same city as it was in the main game. Gone are the bustling crowds. Gone are the countless colonial citizens trying to get by in their daily lives. Gone are the things that make Boston are city. The city is largely empty of all civilian life with the few civilians inhabiting the rain soaked city just idly standing by not doing anything in particular. Other than the living statues that are the civilians, Boston is inhabited by soliders. Lots and lots of soldiers that will run you down within seconds of seeing you forcing you into another fight.

The story behind The Betrayal leaves something to be desired but it does offer an update on what has been happening since George Washington took control of the colonies with his Apple of Eden. Sam Adams is now the head of a resistance movement that oddly enough, contains British Redcoats. Talk about enemy of my enemy is my friend. Connor, following the advice from a dying Benedict Arnold in the previous episode, goes on a hunt to find Benjamin Franklin and use him as an asset to defeat King Washington. The story was obviously designed to make sense after all three episodes have been released but the here and now parts of this story have had very little attention given to them. Much like the main games appalling mission design, the story merely serves as the reason for sending the player on another fetch quest or another fight and doesn't capture the interest of the player at all. It's almost as if they didn't try. Why am I getting a Horseshoe for Benjamin Franklin? I couldn't tell you, I was too busy being bored.

Dagnabbit! Go get 'em boys!

The side missions from the previous episode, the Infamy, make a return here but if you've played the previous entry, you'll quickly be reminded just how fruitless the task of feeding the starving civilian really is. The only exception is that this starving civilian is standing next to an unoccupied food stall. Beggars can't be choosers but it's apparent that they can be food critics. Other than save the starving UK Masterchef host Gregg Wallace, you can attack a convoy or stop a civilian from being killed. Non of it leads to any type of reward or decline in enemy control over the city, you just simply get to look cool in a fight which Ubisoft Montreal seem to think is a good enough prize.

The fighting once again returns as the saving grace of this game with combat being entirely unchanged but just as fun. The good news is that with lots of enemies to fight, you'll get some good practise. The bad news is that you have to fight wave after wave of brainless AI. At least you look cool whilst you're doing it.

I'm freeee as a biiiiird noooow

With the new episode comes the new Wolf power which this time around, is Eagle Flight which acts in a very similar fashion to Batman Arkham Asylums grapple mechanic with Connor targeting a ledge or a similar handhold and flying to it. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be darting around like a supernatural assassin (Move over Corvo). It's quite a lot of fun to vanish from an enemy only to appear on a rooftop and then descend to deliver a killing blow. However, it's disappointing that the game can't keep up with prolonged flight. The player is able to chain together flights to stay in the air longer. The problem here is that this is when Connor is moving faster than he ever did in the DLC or the main game so the game can't sustain the frame rate which results in freezing for a couple of seconds which is miles worse than your typical framerate chugging.

The Verdict

The Tyranny of King Washington: The Betrayal seems to take the worst aspects out of Assassin's Creed 3 and places them all into one nasty basket. The clumsy AI, the never ending swarms of rent-a-soldiers and the inexcusable mission design make this DLC a frustrating hour and a half to two hours of gameplay. Yes, it's really that short which will probably turn people off for the price of £7.99 and $9.99. All in all, the Betrayal is not how you do a DLC.

The Positives.

Eagle Flight.

Slick as ever combat.

The Negatives.

Poor story.

Even worse AI.

Shoddy Mission Design.

Empty and lifeless Boston.

Laughable villains.

Performance issues.

Score - 4 out of 10

George Sinclair is an editor for Analog Addiction, the home of the latest news, reviews and previews. You can find George on Twitter and his blog on IGN. Be sure to follow the OFFICIAL Analog Addiction Twitter as well!

]]>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:09:32 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/03/21/assassins-creed-iii-the-tyranny-of-king-washington-episode-2-the-betrayal-review#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/03/13/rest-in-peace-clive-burr
For those of you who don't know, Clive Burr was the drummer for Iron Maiden from 1980-1982. He drummed to some of the best Iron Maiden songs in his short time as their drummer namely The Prisoner, The Number of The Beast, Run To The Hills, Invaders and many more.

He died on the 12th of March 2013 aged 56 after suffering a long illness from Multiple Sclerosis.

As a huge Maiden fan, it's painful to see him go out this way. His illness left him in a lot of debt and despite being a former band member, Maiden would frequently host charity gigs on his behalf. He died in his sleep so I guess and hope it wasn't painful in the final hours.

Clive hasn't been part of the band for 30 years now but me and vast numbers of other fans still think of him as one of the biggest contributions to Iron Maiden in their long but largely consistent line-up. Clive was replaced by current Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain just as the band was about to record their fourth album, Piece of Mind.

Like any Maiden fan, the world has just gotten one person emptier both literally and figuratively. Below are some of Clives best songs with Iron Maiden.

We'll miss you mate.

UP THE IRONS!

Run to the Hills.

Invaders.

The Prisoner.

Transylvania.

Iron Maiden.

]]>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:42:19 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/03/13/rest-in-peace-clive-burr#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/03/11/where-lucasarts-went-wrong
Remember when Lucasarts was a more than average developer that produced a great game one after another? I sure do. I remember Star Wars Bounty Hunter, I remember Jedi Knight and Jedi Knight Academy, I remember X-Wing, I remember Republic Commando, I remember Knight of the Old Republic, and yes, I remember Star Wars f**king Battlefront.

Do you know what else I remember?

I remember when Lucasarts where a developer I could take seriously.

Sadly, those days are far behind us buried under such titles as The Force Unleashed II and Kinect Star Wars and the cancelled Battlefront 3 with them desperately trying to crawl out of the bog that is Lucasarts over the last generation. Lets start with where they went wrong shall we?

The biggest mistake.

Now, this isn't the mere ramblings of a disgruntled fan. Well, they are but I know how to articulate my argument.

Now there ARE spoilers but read this anyway, I'll be saving you money if you haven't already bought the games like I did.

Lets just put it out there. The biggest mistake Lucasarts has made in this generation is The Force Unleashed. That's right, The Force Unleashed. The real goof up here on Lucasarts part was that they had no vision. A hinderance that has plagued them for years now and you know what? It's a damned shame. Let's roll it on back to the twilight days of the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox where Battlefront 2 was, unknown to us, the last decent game we'd play that Lucasarts had given us. The 14/15 year old me was ecstatic at the announcement of a next-gen Star Wars game that had you playing as the most powerful being to use the Force in the history of the Star Wars universe. Tech demo's and pre-alpha footage really showed what a next-gen Star Wars game could be like. Then came the trailers and the developer diaries that saw your character rip a Star Destroyer from the sky with his bare hands and the latter telling us just how powerful we'd be with the brand new, top of the range physics engine backing us up. Add all that with a good story and you have the fans attention. And by George, did they get it.

The Force Unleashed was a gargantuan marketing campaign just as it was also a video game. Lucasarts really pulled out all the stops on this one. They made it all canon, gave the characters interesting backgrounds, gave us a character that as wimpy as he was, was overshadowed by the stellar supporting characters. They put out toys, they put out comics, they put the game out on every single console in use today including the PlayStation 2, hell, they even got Jimmy Smits back as Bail Organa.

And you know what? It worked. The Force Unleashed is the best-selling Star Wars game of all time and it paid off. Was is a success though? Ah, now that's the thing. The marketing was the success. Was it the game? No, no, no, no, no. The game itself is mediocre at best when it comes to how it plays. I wouldn't give a shit about half of the characters if I hadn't been fed up to my eyeballs with interesting character backgrounds and introductions and the such. The story is miles better than most.

What really made the franchise fail was how they handled the second game, or mishandled it if you want to see it that way. The Force Unleashed 2 had a similar but smaller marketing campaign. It didn't release on nearly as many consoles as the first game and the writer of the first game, Haden God-he's-awesome Blackman left halfway through production. He was also the writer of the second game and it was pretty clear that he wasn't done. The first game was shortish but it had nothing on the Force Unleashed 2's 4 hour long story that literally has you escape Kamino, travel to Cato Nemoidia, go to Dagobah for a split second just so they can shoehorn Yoda in (seriously, this is one small f**king galaxy is it not?) and then back to Kamino to end the game which see's the Rebel Alliance capture Darth Vader. Yeah, seriously.

Now the game sold a cool 1.5 million units whereas the first game has sold over 6 million units as of 2009. With the stellar performance of the first game, it's a mystery as to why they didn't dedicate the same resources to the sequel as now, we'll probably (hopefully) never see a third. So those of you who write fan fiction, please document how Darth Vader escapes for me would you?

Other mistakes.

Most of these go without saying but:

Star Wars Kinect. Why? - Darth Vader dancing.

Cancelling Battlefront 3. Why? - They'd make a ton of money from fans of the first two games which sold really, really well.

Lack of vision and lack of a decent business model.

The abandonment of past games that were obviously designed to have sequels. I'm talking about Republic Commando here. We don't have a lot of FPS Star Wars games but this game out right before the Call of Duty success ship set sail.

NOT. LISTENING. TO. THE. FANS. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Lucasarts hate their fans. Whilst they most likely do not hate their fans, they sure as hell don't like listening to them. I must say that I agree with developers having their own creativity but when you have fans literally begging for sequels to games they love and sold reasonably well, you'd think they'd have the sense to listen to them. If any of the recent games are indications, it's obvious they don't like to listen to them.

Half promises. Here's what I mean (see below). You see that? I want to be able to do that in the game, not push a Stormtrooper five feet and have him just flop dead. This encapsulates Lucasarts lack of vision in the sense of longevity. How are we going to make this work? How can we make this concept image a reality. Don't set the bar too high for yourselves. Also check out the TV spot above. Why can he throw Darth Vader through THREE metal walls in the trailer and the best I can manage is making Vader stagger like he's suddenly spotted a £50 note on the floor walking home after the Imperial Christmas party?

How to bounce back.

What Lucasarts really need to do is prove they still know their shit. They need to remind people, especially Disney, that they have what it takes to be the cream of the whole damned crop. They need to straight into that mirror and realise what they need to do two simple things:

A) Listen to your fans, you got them for a reason in the first place. They know what they like and they'll buy your games.

B) Set out a clear vision of what you want to do. No half baked projects like The Force Unleashed because now the whole company has made itself look like an arse. Cut out the pragmatism. Think about HOW you can make your game awesome. Don't set a target on a dartboard, down a bottle of Vodka straight and then aim for the bullseye.

Lucasarts sit on a GOLDMINE of deep fictional content that very few franchises have. The likes of Mass Effect and Harry Potter have their own fiction and lore but they don't have the mass expanse of fiction that Star Wars benefits from. You have a whole universe out there Lucasarts. Stop shoehorning in Darth Vader, Yoda, Boba Fett, Han Solo and the goddamn fantastic walking carpet that is Chewbacca and GET OUT INTO THAT UNIVERSE. It's a galaxy, not a Yorkshire village. Give us games that we can cherish for many years to come and remind me why I was a fan in the first place because now, I sit here scratching my head as to why I am one.

Peace out.

]]>Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:31:41 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/03/11/where-lucasarts-went-wrong#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/02/21/my-farewell-to-ryan-clements-and-colin-campbell
So I've spent the last almost 24 hours covering the news side of the PlayStation Meeting which turned out to be the official announcement of the PlayStation 4 for Analog Addiction, the site I work for with Jamiemad66, HughBear, Siphen, Troyfullbuster, Vlad94Pintea, Trebor and other MyIGN members I haven't named because their usernames are too hard to remember.

The reason why I open with what I'm doing for Analog Addiction isn't self promotion or even promotion for the site, no. Instead, it's a symbol of what I've achieved after finding writers like Ryan "The PlayStation Powerhouse" Clements and fellow Englishman Colin Campbell and IGN in it's entirety. When I found IGN, I had no interest in writing for a career, not because I didn't like the idea, rather because the idea never crossed my mind and I didn't think I'd be any good at it.

So after discovering IGN, Mr. Clements and Mr. Campbell I decide "Hey, I want to work in the gaming media". So I get a blog at MyIGN and start writing. In September 2012, I run into that pesky but hardworking Aussie Jamiemad66 and join the Analog Addiction team. Since then I've been in contact with companies PR, we get quite a few hits and the list goes on. Do you know the reason why I've suddenly developed this love for writing? It's because I looked at the hard work Ryan and Colin have produced for IGN and I've seen it and gone "I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to write for a profession."

Whilst the two of them, if they read this of course, may disagree at the moment which is understandable given the circumstances, I have a burning urge to write about games for a living as it looks like an awesome job for me and I'm willing to go through all the shit to be able to do it. For that, I have IGN to thank and more importantly, Clements to thank because of his awesome advice over various episodes of Podcast Beyond, my favourite podcast I should mention (I'm also wearing the shirt but only just realised) and Colin because of the amount of depth he adds to his features. Seriously, they're a blast to read. Go and read them if you can find them.

I always hoped that if I ever work at IGN, that Clements would be there but sadly this won't be the case. I don't know how Podcast Beyond will ever be the same without you since you were the since 2007 (Jesus, long time). I'm going to miss you guys, IGN lost two of it's best writers today and it came as chillingly nasty surprise. I hope to see you both around on the Twitter's and the Interweb's in general.

To conclude, this word is a beaten Horse of a word (like, beaten to death) but you guys were an inspiration that got me writing and I thank you very, very much for that and the memories. Good luck for the future, we'll all miss you both greatly.

Share your best memories of the two below! Also Ryan, you have an awesome love of K-Pop that I will never understand but we love ya for it.

Dead Space 3 is only a few weeks away and every fan of the necromorph infested series was greeted to a small taste test with the release of the official demo last week. Showcasing the weapon crafting system, plus a section of the games campaign in single and multiplayer. So in true Dead Space 3 spirit, George Sinclair/thewildbeard and Jamie Briggs/jamiemad66 throw on their warmest gloves and suited up for their adventure on Tau Volantis.

One big step for Dead Space

The cooperative play.

George/thewildbeard - News/Reviews/Bearded Editor.

"Overall, it worked quite well. Far better than I was expecting. Visceral have taken special care weaving John Carver into Isaacs story quite well. Thoughts go to the heavy machinery on the bridge as it's collapsing where I, (playing as Carver), was briefly separated from Isaac and had to climb the machinery just as it was about to collapse".

"When I got to the top I had to help Isaac open the door to the cabin that was trapping him. The cool thing here is how the perspective changed and I could see Isaac inside trying to get out with me pulling on the other end. When you play this on single player, John isn't there to help you so Isaac ends up breaking out himself. I thought it was a cool touch."

Jamie/jamiemad66 - Managing Editor/Australian.

"I am with you there, I have been with the franchise since the start and I love the universe Visceral have created. I will be the first to admit, I didn't have high expectations for Dead Space 3, but the demo certainly showed me how wrong I was. I particularly loved the change of setting, the snowy world of Tau Volantis looks stunning and it's intriguing to think how levels will take place further into the game."

"See, I didn't even notice Carver helping to get the door open, once I burst through the door it was such a fast moment. That is a finer detail that really is starting to make me think that the co-op campaign may actually be the superior way to play."

"Comparing my single player adventure to our co-op display of ass-kicking; the single player campaign barely had me interacting with Carver, whereas the interaction certainly came off strongly co-operatively."

George/thewildbeard.

"Yeah, I agree with you. During the single player, I was expecting to see more of Carver even if it meant he was just an NPC. Of course, this could be the case in a later level but right now, it doesn't look to be the case."

"Some argue that Dead Space has moved beyond the realm of being a survival horror game. I'm not one of those people as I think the game still has the potential to be scary in single player. With co-op, I think that Dead Space 3 has two different approaches: The survival horror for single player and the action game for co-op. I like that. I like the interaction between Isaac and Carver."

"If you've done some reading on Carver, you'll see he has an interesting background as an EarthGOV agent whose family was presumably killed in a Necromorph outbreak on Uxon. It's interesting to know that all this crazy stuff doesn't just happen to Isaac. Did I mention Carver will also be suffering from Marker induced hallucinations? I think that has the potential for some interesting story between the two."

Jamie/jamiemad66.

"Agreed. From the example they showed (albeit it a small slice), Carver seems like he will barely be seen in single player. Of course, as you said this may change later on. I think the idea of getting a fleshed out story for both characters seems more interesting rather than just small snippets during single player."

"Dead Space 2 did give me a different feeling than the original. I wasn't as scared and it was easy to predict when enemies were going to pop out. But this idea of two separate campaigns that feel differently, play differently and don't feel tacked on is great in my books. Nobody enjoys a second player being in the game and never acknowledged, this is a problem we will never have to endure."

"That is what excites me about the Carver/Clarke co-operative experience. The idea that both characters could be together, then Carver starts shooting at what he is seeing on his screen, when I see absolutely nothing on mine is very interesting. Off the top of my head, has another game even attempted this idea? If it truly works, it could really set the bar for unique co-op experiences."

George/thewildbeard.

"I don't recall another game doing quite that with its co-op, no. I'm sure I'll be corrected but co-op in games either see's a character placed in, with no impact on or receives no recognition from other characters, (Killzone 3's in particular springs to mind) or games will have a dramatic change in co-op. Uncharted 3 did that. That was a really good co-op mode that definitely wasn't tacked on but it changed the storyline heavily, almost completely."

"I think that whilst it is a horror game, Dead Space 3 is trying to tell a more integral story with an in depth focus on character. I don't think it's possible to recapture the feeling of Dead Space 1, as Dead Space 2 showed. Don't get me wrong, Dead Space 2 was great and had plenty of "OH CRAP!" moments but now the claustrophobia is gone and has been replaced with Dead Space 3's more open environments, I think it's going to prove itself to be a more challenging action game."

"It was evident with the drill part. We got swarmed and then we were killed by the drill. If anything, I still felt a pang of desperation. Desperation to get that drill stopped and to just survive."

Jamie/jamiemad66.

"The open environments will definitely lead to some interesting gameplay differentials from previous games, but I have a sneaking suspicion we may see some tight corridor action down the line."

"Desperation is definitely the right word, enemies coming from all angles but also knowing that the drill is bearing down on you. It also allows for some strategic gameplay, one player focusing on the enemies and one focusing on the mission at hand. I think this will definitely be a teamwork inspired adventure."

"The snow wasn't helping any movement either; the addition of rolling is something simple but definitely helped in the end. I did feel the game was fairly easy with a partner, and from what we played it seemed the higher difficulty is the way to go with friends."

The Gameplay

George/thewildbeard.

"Let’s get down to the gameplay. For me, it felt like I was playing Dead Space. The guns that are slow to kill enemies, the heavy space suit restricting your movements. It was all there. But along with the co-op, we now have human AI trying to kill you which I think is very interesting."

"Whilst we died like miserable failures of spacemen, we quickly sorted ourselves out and fought them off easily. I also noticed that there were a lot of supplies even though we were playing on Normal. I'd have to imagine that playing on Easy would mean that we're invincible" *laughs*.

Jamie/jamiemad66

"That is very true; there were so many drops I was left with ammo to spare. Since it seemed like there were no enemy additions of enemy scaling, we had twice as many bullets for the same amount of enemies."

"Did you try out the weapon crafting system demo they provided?"

George/thewildbeard.

"Yeah, I briefly tooled around with it and created a weapon. It’s a bit complex but it's quick to get used to. I like that stuff is dotted all around the world. It encourages some real digging."

"As for human based combat, I thought they approached that well. The player merely crouches behind cover as opposed to hugging it like they've just woken up from a bad dream. I particularly enjoyed how it turned into three way combat. Isaac vs Unitologists vs Necromorphs. It’s interesting combat to say the least."

"How did you get on with the weapon crafting yourself?"

Jamie/Jamiemad66.

"I found the weapon crafting system to be very complex, but not in a bad way. I am very excited to find more parts and create some truly awesome weapons. Killing necromorphs with style? Yes please. I can see some people getting confused and avoiding the system, but either way it’s a nice addition."

"I found the cover based mechanics to lack the quality of something like the Gears franchise, in all honesty I barely used it. I like how it forces you to change the way you play, focusing on Necromorph limbs and then focusing on headshots for human opponents. Even though human interaction was short in the demo, I am interested to see how it freshens up the gameplay during the game."

George/thewildbeard.

"Hmm I prefer the lack of a Gears type cover system, as popping behind cover in that fashion would ease up combat against the Necromorphs, but when they’re charging you, it would be an unnecessary hindrance. That constant feeling of being surrounded by danger is highlighted again here".

"What I like is that because while I was doing headshots for humans, I ended up doing the same for Necromorphs, and quickly realised it wasn't right and that I've taken a step closer to my doom. Whilst human combat was sparse, I think it will really open up later on and if Visceral play their cards right, we could have a more fleshed out villain because of this rather than brief glimpses from behind a window or something."

Jamie/jamiemad66 - Wrapping up the conversation.

"From the small amount we played, it seems like more Dead Space, which cannot be a bad thing in my book. Definitely looking forward to it now, in what is a very crowded first half of the year."

"So George, final thoughts. From what you have played, Dead Space 3. Yay or nay?"

George/thewildbeard.

"As for Yay or Nay: Big Yay from me. This might be the first Dead Space I buy. I've always played my brothers copies but this has really perked my interest. The changes made had me wondering whether the franchise had gone on for too long. Don't forget that Dead Space launched in October 2008, that's over four years ago. Once I played the game, the changes that Visceral have made and the content they have put in make it a very enticing package. What they've done seems to work well for Dead Space."

The demo is live on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade now, so make sure to download and check out the latest Dead Space adventure. The game will be landing on shelves on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC this February 5 in North America, February 7 in Australia and February 8 in Europe.

What did you think of the demo? What was your preference; single player or co-operative? Let us know below and for all the latest Dead Space 3 news and our upcoming review, stay tuned to Analog Addiction.

Analog Addiction is where you can find all the latest news, reviews and previews. Jamie Briggs is the managing editor of Analog Addiction and you can catch up with him on Twitter, IGN and Youtube. George Sinclair is a news editor as well as an occasional reviewer. You can find him also on Twitter and IGN. Don't forget to check out the Facebooks, the Twitters and the Youtubes for Analog Addiction.

With the news that The Ultimate Far Cry Compilation has been listed to be available on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC but with no other information than pricing, it leaves the question asking just what is in this mysterious compilation. I see two likely scenarios here.

One, the original Far Cry, released in 2004 saw no release on consoles. It was a PC only game that is still very much loved today by the PC community. What this compilation could mean is that Far Cry is coming to consoles 8 years after its release. This, of course, is a good thing. The original Far Cry was one of the first games to allow players to tackle situations in variety of different ways. It placed the player in an open world, tropical paradise very similar to two of its sequels. Bear in mind that this was 2004 so the open world came in the form of sandbox levels. Players were given an objective to which they had to achieve by any means. You could pick off enemies long range with the use of a sniper rifle or you could tackle them head on with a full frontal assault with the former being preferred personally as Far Cry was a damned hard game when it wanted to be.

If this is indeed the case, then that would mean we’ll be seeing a collection of Far Cry, Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 on consoles and PC with all the DLC for Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3.

Now the second scenario, is that we’ll be getting not only Far Cry ported to consoles, but it’s sequels as well. The original Far Cry had sequels that never made it to the PC and were instead released on the original Xbox, thus birthing the Far Cry franchise on consoles for the very first time. What we could get is Far Cry Instincts: Predator the 2006 game that had both Far Cry Instincts from 2005 and Far Cry Instincts: Evolution from 2006 but in high definition. This would make much more sense as this game was originally released for the Xbox 360 so it’s already available for at least one platform. Far Cry Instincts was also planned for a release on the Xbox, the Nintendo Gamecube and the PlayStation 2 with the latter versions being cancelled. So collectively, it would be Far Cry, Far Cry Instincts: Predator, Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 with all the DLC for FC2 and FC3.

Far Cry Instincts was brought to the Xbox for one reason, to get as close to the Far Cry experience as possible on a console. The problem was, the first game was developed by Crytek, the people behind the Crysis series. What’s the problem you ask? Well, like the original Crysis, the original Far Cry was a technological powerhouse that ate up the processing power of computers in 2004 and porting it to consoles was impossible due to the likely fact that if you were to try and port it, your console would grow arms, take a pistol to its head and would blow itself away into silicon purgatory.
Fingernails of certain death!

So what Ubisoft did is give it to Ubisoft Montreal, the guys behind Assassin’s Creed III. What they did was take as much of they could from the original and make it into a console experience. Whilst it was a rebuilt-for-consoles version, it still remained one of the most varied shooters out there. Players were still given the option to use stealth and a tactical strategy. However, the only similarity that it shared with the original were the characters names and the tropical setting. Apart from that, it was a completely different game. This game still featured a large arsenal of weapons and a decent array of vehicles including the Far Cry favourite hangglider but with superhuman animal powers that allowed the player to move super quick, jump super far and slash enemies with claws. So yes, it was quite the deviation. The good news is that this all went down a treat and worked very, very well.

Now if we are getting four games let alone the collection, the pricing would have to be higher. Far Cry 3 only just came out in November and December and it’s unlikely that you would include the four games for roughly £10 each. If the collection features four games, then it would be more likely that the price of £39.99 is just a place holder. A more realistic price would be something along the lines of £59.99. That said, Ubisoft put out collections at a decent price. After all, the Assassin’s Creed Anthology released just after Assassin’s Creed III and was only £99.97 and it had all the DLC so we could be seeing a collection with all the DLC. The collection would make sense from a content point of view but with a price point of £39.99, it doesn’t seem realistic.
Fire arrows were rubbish. Use explosive instead.

If it were to release for £39.99, then it would likely be Far Cry, Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 with no DLC but that’s hardly an “Ultimate” compilation. You may remember a report from last month containing news of the Far Cry trilogy being released on steam for under £5. Now that was a great deal.

Of course, there is no official existence of the Ultimate Far Cry Compilation so for now, we’ll just have to play all the games individually on their respective platforms. In the meantime, you should just play Far Cry 3. Trust me, it’s brilliant. Check out Analog Addictions reviewhere!

George Sinclair is an editor for Analog Addiction, the home of the latest news, reviews and previews. You can follow George on Twitter and his blog on IGN. Don’t forget to follow the OFFICIAL Analog Addiction Twitter!

]]>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:10:56 -0800Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/01/14/what-could-the-ultimate-far-cry-compilation-hold#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/01/07/where-should-assassins-creed-go-next
Where should Assassin's Creed go next? This is a question that has been asked immediately after the end of every major Assassin's Creed game to date. Feudal Japan, the French Revolution, the Russian Civil war, World War II. Many fans over the years have yearned for an Assassin's Creed title set in of these time periods and many a conversation has been had on a forum board somewhere discussing just how they would and wouldn't work. But whilst they sound enticing, few have been able to accurately picture how these games would actually look. That is aside from one fan who took it upon themselves to create some fantastically detailed artwork of how Assassin's Creed may look if it was set in Ancient China.

Chinese artist Chaoyuan Xu is the artist responsible for these gorgeous pieces of artwork. You can check out the Deviant Art page here containing his Assassin's Creed art and more.

Be aware! Mild spoilers for Assassin's Creed III follow:

Admittedly, I'm quite rusty on my post World War II Chinese history but the ages of the Chinese Dynasties would be a great setting for an Assassin's Creed game. For one, the architecture of Ancient China would bring a new level of urban exploration to the series. The world was a much bigger place up until a few decades ago so whatever history available to us about regions such as the far East is confined to the history books for those of us living in the West. Introducing a time setting largely unknown to an audience in the West is sure to peak a sizeable interest in the fanbase.

Assassin's Creed III touched upon this with the slanted roofs of the American Colonies. The previous games featured rooftops that were all very flat and didn't provide Altair or Ezio with that little extra challenge of climbing. Ubisoft Montreal paid special attention the way Connor climbs in AC3 so it would be really interesting to see how an Assassin would navigate a city like this.

Urban exploration isn't the only thing that would be brought to the franchise. The culture of past and early civilisations is something that has always been a key focus of the Assassin's Creed games. The culture of the Italian Renaissance from the Ezio trilogy is something that made a huge mark on the franchise.

With something more unfamiliar to at least Western players, an Assassin's Creed game set in either China or Japan would be able to benefit from such a culturally rich environment never really explored in Assassin's Creed as a franchise. It's scarcely explored inside games themselves with a Chinese Assassin, Shao Jun being featured in Assassin's Creed Embers (Thanks to kingsized) which is something only Assassin's Creed fans with knowledge of the external lore themselves would know.

Of course, to suit the story of Desmond, the series has to move forward in time with every game so a spin off like Assassin's Creed III Liberation would suit an era like this well. Granted, AC3: Liberation was set around the same time as Assassin's Creed III but it was a story almost completely unrelated to Desmond's save from the Connor mission to New York.

Desmond's story is done. Despite the the ending to Assassin's Creed III leaving the mother of all open endings, the story could very well go into a new direction. Now that Desmond is finished (and lets thank the gaming Gods for that), the path of a new Assassin could be written. As far as the next-gen goes, Ubisoft can have a clean slate here. With the ending to Assassin's Creed III being what it was, I'm not interested to see the forced sequel to the modern day story.

Players may also recall Sean Hastings, one of Desmond's allies from the games talking about the animus theoretically being able to travel back tens of thousands of years to the memories of an ancestor long forgotten. Whilst that could provide the franchise with new possibilities, one of the draws for the Assassin's Creed series is the historical settings to the games. It not only keeps them grounded and stops them getting too outlandish, it's also simply just enjoyable to run around a historical landmark during a certain period in time.

With a time setting like this, a really deep and interesting story could be told. The Chinese Dynasties are fascinating pieces of history and given that each change in a Dynasty was often the result of conflict, it would be very interesting to see how Ubisoft could fit a characters story into this.

Every Assassin's Creed game has many things in common and one of those factors is weapons. We're used to swords, axes, knives and hidden blades but an almost alien time era such as the Chinese Dynasty period would feature some pretty impressive weaponry. We already saw the Rope Dart in Assassin's Creed III that is based on a weapon from Chinese design.

To see more Chinese weapons would certain interest me as a longtime fan of the series.

Aside from deadly weaponry, an Assassin's Creed game set in the far East could also explore some of the fighting styles used from that part of the world. In the case of a Chinese setting, the combat of Shaolin Kung Fu used by the Shaolin Monks could be greatly explored and could possibly bring a brand new feel to the combat in Assassin's Creed in a way we have not yet seen. Each of the Assassin's Creed games have a strong European influence in combat.

The first game features Medieval with the use of broadswords and daggers, rapiers and stiletto's for Assassin's Creed II and axes and hammers for the two sequels. Assassin's Creed 3 saw the use of tomahawks, which is Native American based weaponry but the game also features battle axes and firearms.

Shaolin combat is also used as a means of meditation rather than having the sole purpose of fighting so a game featuring martial arts with Chinese weaponry would be something that fans could really dig their teeth into. The way enemy AI fights could benefit from a setting such as this as well. Enemies could be trained in the Shaolin arts and would provide a real challenge for the player. When it comes down to it, the enemies in the Assassin's Creed games are rarely a challenge. (Apart from the Jagers in Assassin's Creed III.)

As well as some brand new exciting urban exploration, Assassin's Creed set in China would also allow Ubisoft to take the chance to explore some of rural China. Assassin's Creed III's exploration of the natural world was an almost intrinsically deep experience not seen in any other game so the chance to climb the mountains of China and to run across the rooftops of ancient Chinese cities would surely make it an even more refreshing experience for the franchise rather than simply having a new time setting to explore. Being able to explore a new part of the world essentially would be a huge step forward for the series.

History of the far East has always fascinated me. Be it Cambodian history, Chinese history or Japanese history, it's a very alien part of history for someone who has studied lots of European history both academically and personally.

This may just be fan artwork but even so, it's a window into just how an Assassin's Creed game set in the ancient far East could look and it looks phenomenal. Whats more is that Ubisoft could very well head in this direction. We're on the verge of the next-generation consoles being announced as this console generation is coming to an end. It's a fair bet to guess that Ubisoft is thinking about Assassin's Creed for the next-gen and that they're going to be starting work on a new project if they have not already done so.

If you like these pieces of artwork, the artist himself is selling the original pieces so if you'd like to own of them (I know I would), you'd best head over to his page on Deviant Art.

George Sinclair is an editor for Analog Addiction, the home of the latest news, reviews and previews. You can follow George on Twitter and his blog on IGN. Don’t forget to follow the OFFICIAL Analog Addiction Twitter!

]]>Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:20:15 -0800Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2013/01/07/where-should-assassins-creed-go-next#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/10/06/an-update
If you follow me, you may have noticed that my blog has been quite a while. And I don't like it. I'm still going to get that Top 25 PS3 Games and the Top Villains blogs done, they're constantly on my mind and I know that some people were looking forward to them. I apologise if anyone was looking forward to it and is thinking "man, that dick thewildbeard is a lazy bum". Whilst that is true in some other respects, it's not the case here. And I'll tell you why.

For the last maybe three or four weeks I've been working for Analog Addiction. That's right, the website set up by MyIGN's favourite Aussie, Jamiemad66. And man, I just want to thank you bro. When I saw that you were hiring for Analog Addiction, I was actually late for work because I had to apply and for some reason that I'm very grateful for, you accepted me man. We're all unpaid but I treat it as a proper job. I'm waking up and seeing what news needs to be done, what features I can come up with etc. Giving me a position at Analog Addiction rocks man and I just want to thank you for the opportunity. The sites coming along amazingly, we'll be at 10,000 hits in a week or so, I know it. And we have a great team at Analog Addiction. Eric, Robbie, Alex, Jaime, Vlad, Michael, Anthony, Jonny and Jamie, we're kicking arse daily.

The reason you're seeing less of me on MyIGN is because of Analog Addiction and now that I'm back at Uni, what attention I'm not paying to that is at AA. You'll be seeing me around here, I love the MyIGN community and although I hear of people getting shit from others, I've a pleasant experience since I started blogging. And just because I said that, it doesn't mean you can start giving me shit to contradict me (I'm looking at you Briggs). It's now officially the triple A game season so expect to see some tasty, tasty reviews in the coming months.

That's all I have to say for now. I've still got a lot of stuff to write for Analog Addiction including some long overdue Eurogamer demo impressions so I leave you with these:

]]>Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:55:13 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/10/06/an-update#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/10/06/nihilistic-activision-and-sony-an-opinion
This November, we'll be getting the first Vita entry of Call Of Duty, the mega selling behemoth of the FPS genre. Black Ops Declassified arrives this November and we haven't seen much. But what we have seen hasn't been pretty. In fact, it's very unsettling what we've seen of the game so far. If you didn't already know, Black Ops Declassified is being developed by Nihilistic Software, the now infamous developer behind Resistance: Burning Skies. And that is a title I think they don't deserve.

Now, some opinions differ on Burning Skies, but the general consensus is that the game just simply wasn't very good. As an FPS, it was competent. It controlled well enough and somewhat cleanly, but then again, this should apply to every FPS. Burning Skies was a bad Resistance game. Now someone argued with me that you can't (and shouldn't approach Burning Skies as an Insomniac game). And that person is right. But you do have to approach it as a Resistance game. The tellings of a Resistance game are a good story, good gameplay, a good narrative and great characters (yes Joseph Capelli, I'm looking straight at you). The problem was that Nihilistic failed here. The story wasn't good, the gameplay was very basic, the narrative was poor and the characters were flat, one dimensional and uninteresting. And to go along with that, the multiplayer was..."bear bones" as I believe Analog Addiction's very own Jamie Briggs put it.

Call Of Duty Black Ops Declassified doesn't look much better. It was worrying enough that we just had an announcement of the games existence at this years E3 and that we had no glimpse of the game for over two months until we saw it at Gamescom 2012. The worst bit was that it was being developed by Nihilistic. Obviously, Nihilistic were working on Declassified before the release of Burning Skies so Activision and Sony had little idea of how the game would ultimately be received. Now it's too late. You can't just hand off Declassified to another developer. Activision and Sony are stuck with this game and I think they want to forget it.

If you're not familiar with Nihilistic's back catalogue of games this console generation, allow me to run you through it. In 2007, they developed Conan for the PS3 and Xbox 360 which I actually liked quite a lot. In 2009, they released Zombie Apocalypse for XBLA and PSN. In 2011, we had Playstation Move Heroes which was well, Playstation Move Heroes. Most recently, we've had Resistance: Burning Skies.

Now lets look at Declassified. It's not going to have a zombie mode which is absurd from a sales point of view. I know people who literally only play the zombie mode and it's gone from a little bonus level to almost a game in itself. The interesting thing is that Nihilistic would "love" to add the inclusion of zombies to Declassified. What really made me raise my eyebrows was when they said over Twitter "Only Activision and Sony have the power to greenlight Zombies mode for CoD Vita. We would love to do it if they ask. But it’s not our call". That statement just sends alarm bells ringing for me. What it says to me is that Activision and Sony just aren't interested in the project anymore. This is the first Call Of Duty game on the first handheld that can handle an FPS. The next bit of worrying news is that they don't even know if it will have additional content after release. So many games announce their DLC plans for their games. Nihilistic have said that "nothing has been announced" which furthers my theory about Sony and Activision all but giving up on the project.

Now back to multiplayer. The way it's being described would make a name like Call Of Duty: Lite a more appropriate title. There's no Theatre Mode or any other additional modes aside from Team Deathmatch, Free-For-All, Drop Zone, Team Tactical, Kill Confirmed Deathmatch. There'll be no killcam which is very odd. I won't pretend that I know any technical stuff about this game but surely it can't be that much of a hassle to include it. If there is a specific reason, Nihilistic hasn't told us what it is. A new wave based mode named "hostiles" will be a single-player only mode.

I've thought a lot about this issue. I've thought a lot about Resistance: Burning Skies and Call Of Duty Black Ops Declassified and you know what? I'm angry. Not angry because Nihilistic has made a bad game out of the former and isn't impressing with the latter. No sir, I'm angry at how Activision and Sony in my mind have thrown Nihilistic these franchises and have almost said "here, do this and do it to the same standard as Treyarch and Insomniac".

Back in May, IGN's Greg Miller interviewed Rob Heubner of Nihilistic games on Up At Noon. At around the 1.55 mark, Heubner tells us about how Sony approached Nihilistic with a similar attitude. They effectively told Nihilistic to design a PS3 shooter and then have time to add things in it but they didn't know what franchise they were developing for or even the console they were developing for. My guess is that Nihilistic developed a very different kind of game and just didn't have enough time to go back and do it properly. And it looks to be a similar story with COD. They've quite clearly been working on both Burning Skies and Declassified at the same time so neither game has got the proper development time it needs. Bear in mind that Nihilistic are a small studio as well. They're not like Naughty Dog, Insomniac or Sucker Punch.

Quite frankly, it's unfair to dump all this pressure on a small developer and expect them to make games from big name franchises to the same kind of standard with what is clearly not enough time. The Vita is a brand new and more than capable console so why doesn't Sony seem to care about FPS games on it? Not only does it make Sony look foolish, but now it's making Nihilistic only known as that-developer-that-makes-bad-games. Declassified isn't even out yet and people are already calling it out to be a disappointment and I'm inclined to agree but I don't blame Nihilistic. Quite frankly, I'd like to see what Nihilistic can do by themselves with their own game with a good amount of time. I think Sony owe it to them. Just reading and watching interviews I can tell that Nihilistic are a committed developer and it's a great shame they're kept on a short leash by Sony.

What do you guys think of this? I'd love to hear your comments about this issue.

Sound Shapes from the first glance just appears to be a colourful side-scrolling platformer. And if you think that, you'd be right. But as you might be able to grasp from the name, it's the music that accompany's Sound Shapes that sets it apart from the likes of the side-scrollers such as Rayman: Origins, another beautifully coloured game.

The Story

That's right Dramatic Cat and IGNers. Sound Shapes has no story. Instead you just get from point A to point B. It's all about the musical journey maaaaaan.

The Gameplay

Like any and every side-scrolling platformer, you will have to run, jump and (more often than not) die to reach the other side of the screen. Now this all sounds very generic and somewhat uninteresting but as I mentioned before, it's the music that makes Sound Shapes pop up on the map. I'll get onto the music later though. Dotted around the levels are collectible coins that give off a specific sound that generates music as you collect them. Many things in the level such as enemies and objects make music but collecting these coins adds to the existing music and can allow for some really great tunes to be heard as you progress through one of the levels.

Sound Shapes also comes with a great level editor. You're given a blank slide with which you are free to add as much as you want or as little as you want into making your own levels. And this is where the touch controls come in. You use the touchscreen to activate and use the menus selecting and deleting as you go along whilst the rear touchpad is used to move stuff around or to rotate items, objects, enemies and whatever you wish to construct your world with. Once you get the hang of it, you can create some great looking levels. Using the rear touch pad to move and rotate items can get a bit fiddly at times and you may have to go through the tutorial again but it's something you'll get the hang of. Everything you see in the campaign levels can be used in the editor and this makes for some really interesting worlds to be created which you can then share using the games online functionality. You're able to connect with other users, follow them and see what they come up with later as well as favourite and rate their worlds. Even a few days after the game came out, there were already some great levels out there. If you get a chance, check out a guy called OrionRyan. He publishes some interesting levels.

However, as simple as the gameplay is for Sound Shapes is, I had some problems with it that arose from my apparent lack of skill to play side-scrolling platformers, but I encountered numerous frame rate drops and at one point, freezing especially in the games level editor. It's pretty annoying when you think about it. Sound Shapes isn't a "big" game, it's very focused. Although a lot can happen on screen at any time, it's all the same kind of stuff I.E enemies pottering around, deathtraps, uh, deathtrapping (?). It's not as if you're flying a plane in an open world with enemies shooting at you as you fly though a massive explosion. Obviously, I don't know how to make games but I would have to assume that a small focused game like Sound Shapes should be able to handle what goes on in it's engine.

The Graphics

Sound Shapes is a 2D based game but it looks absolutely beautiful with it's bright colours (that look excellent on the Vita's OLED screen) and interesting and various art styles. Sound Shapes is crisp and sharp making the Vita (if you're playing it on there) look even cooler than it already is.

As mentioned in the latter Gameplay section, I encountered a few graphical problems primarily in the level editor and a few times in the campaign. Look at the picture below. This is one of the later levels in the campaign and one of the more animated ones. Now, I'm sure someone would be able to tell me the answer but I have to question why it froze and chugged along when the game looks as simple as this. They were pretty severe frame rate drops that sometimes plagued me for an entire level. I'm aware that developer Queasy Games are a small company and they have a made a very good game here, but it's still an annoyance holding me back from enjoying Sound Shapes the way I want to enjoy it.

One thing people may want to be aware of is that I have heard that Sound Shapes is somewhat nauseating on a big screen. This game could prove to be an epileptics nightmare so if you suffer from such a thing, try it on the Vita. I encountered so such problems but it's easy to see how this could potentially be a bit full on with all the colours and flashing images.

The Sound

Now this is why Sound Shapes stands out. Sound Shapes has an impressive lineup of artists providing the music for this little side-scroller. Music for the game is provided by the likes of Beck, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie, I Am Robot And Proud. Whilst I had no clue who these people were before I picked up Sound Shapes, they nonetheless provide a great soundtrack with levels built around their songs.

The great thing about the music is that it's all available for use in the level editor. As you can see in the video above, everything makes a noise in Sound Shapes and it's up to you how the music is carried out. You're free to just leave the coins if you want. You'll still get to listen to a good song with whats already provided. Most of the music is more than catchy as I even had some of the music from my own level designs stuck in the my head for a full day. It was pretty cool to listen to my own arrangement of prearranged music.

My one complaint about the music is that I would've loved to have seen what Queasy could've done with different genre's of music. It's all the same kind of genre: Electronic. Now, this is cool but Electronic music isn't my favourite genre of music. I would've loved to see some Rock centred levels or even some Country in the mix.

The Multiplayer

Sound Shapes has no competitive multiplayer to speak of. It's centred around a community of sharing leaderboard scores and exploring other peoples homemade levels. You're able to surf through new and old levels alike, favourite and follow some of your favourite users.

The Problems

Reading some other reviews, I seem to be on my own with some of the problems I encountered with Sound Shapes. I really wanted to enjoy Sound Shapes and as I started playing the game, I was sure it would receive a high score from me. But the problems encountered later on really put me off. The freezing and frame rate drops are pretty frequent and the latter seem to accompany me on every foray into the level editor. It mainly occurs when jumping whilst playing or switching in between slides when editing. It's pretty stupid to see the game stutter on a blank slide with nothing happening. This by far the biggest problem I had with Sound Shapes and more than once I thought about deleting my save. I'd be interested to see if anyone else encountered these problems as it's not something I've heard too much of.

Other problems arise from the somewhat limited range of music. As good as that music is, it seemed like it was pigeonholing itself into an audience of Electronic music fans rather than PS3 owners and the limited number of Vita owners. I rarely purchase music games but Sound Shapes is too interesting to put off. I'd love to see what they could add with any future DLC. Sound Shapes is a good game as it is but I would be disappointed if we didn't get any more stuff along with it. There's no doubt that Queasy are a talented developer who have made a standout game in the ever growing sea of generic titles.

The Final Verdict

Whilst I really enjoy Sound Shapes and would recommend it to anyone with a Vita especially, I had a few problems that I can't ignore whilst playing it. That said, Sound Shapes is going to get a lot more playability out of me as I'll be returning to my university commute in the coming weeks. I can't wait to see what kind of levels I can come up with as well as what others can come up with. If you have Sound Shapes, send me your levels. Despite problems, Sound Shapes was worth the long wait. Oh, and the Sound Shapes Blob should totally be a contender in Playstation Allstars.

Overall I give this game a 7 out of 10.

George Sinclair is just a dude writing a blog. If you like what you read, you can do him a big favour and follow him on IGN and on his Twitter which he is starting to care more about. And as always, if you read this, you're awesome.

I've been working quite a lot lately and that inevitably has the big drawback to any blogger: not being able to write. However, the plus side to this is that I'll get paid and will be able to buy games to review. Can I get a "OH YEAH"?

I'm writing this as an update of why I've been quite everywhere else apart from the comment sections and as a preview of what I have in the works. Now what you have in the works wildbeard? Well I'm glad you asked Mr. Rhetorical Question. I'm going to be writing a Sound Shapes review for tomorrow which will be up 12:00 GMT. I would say "stay tuned" but what the hell, I'll be posting it to people's walls anyway. I'll be a nice guy and do half the work for you.

What I have next doesn't yet have a publication window as I'm still not sure how I want to approach it. I'm planning on writing reviews for The Walking Dead episodes 1-5. I'm thinking of doing on big review for it but what's holding me back is how I would do it. I'm not good with editing video's so that isn't really an option unless you just want to watch a video of me talking about them for however long. What I might just end up doing is writing the three reviews for the existing episodes one after the other and then wait for episode 3 and 4 to be released. But who knows? What would you guys like to see me do? Just remember, a video review would be limited with what I could do. But people tell me they like my review layouts, so I could just stick with that.

My next blog coming is a big one. Directly influenced from Greg Miller and Colin Moriarty's Top 25 PS3 Games. That's right, I'm going to be doing my own Top 25 and quite frankly, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to take some time to really think about which games will be included. This won't be a list I'll have thought about on the drive to work or something, it's going to be a well thought out list.

The blog after that will be something quite interesting that I think will get some great discussions going. I'll be assessing some of the best, the worst and the "meh" villains of this console cycle. Now, this is something I thought of on my way to work today but fear not! I shall be approaching it the same way as my Top 25 PS3 games.

The good news is that I have quite a lot of free time this week so I'll be getting that stuff in the works and I'll have it published as soon as possible.

Now please, enjoy this gif of a cat:

George Sinclair is a your friendly neighbourhood beardy man writing a blog about video games and everything nerdy and just. Do him a great favour and throw him a follow on MyIGN and his Twitter. Thanks for reading and as always, if you read this, you're awesome.

]]>Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:18:15 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/09/16/thewildbeard-upcoming-stuff#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/09/04/thewildbeard-reviews-transformers-fall-of-cybertron
MyIGN, I finally present to you my review of Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron. I apologise for the damned lateness of this review, I have been working like a dog over the last two weeks. I've had little sleep and one day off. But there is one advantage to that, I've had a lot of time to play this game. So lets get into it.

The Overview

Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron takes places shortly after the events of 2010's War For Cybertron and tells you the tale of the last days of the Cybertronian Civil War. Players will experience Cybertron's end from both the optics of the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons. And man, it's a dark tale.

The Story

Fall Of Cybertron takes place over a period of six Earth days and see's Optimus Prime and the last of the Autobots remaining on Cybertron simply trying to leave their dead world with Megatron's war mongering Decepticons hot on their tail pipes. FOC is a far darker story than which we saw in it's predecessor and is in turn, more tightly knit. FOC character roster has been greatly shortened which isn't as bad as it sounds, it just allows High Moon to tell a more involved story. Although I was really hoping we'd get to see the Autobot's mad scientist, Wheeljack make and appearance. There is a problem with the continuity that really bugs me but it's not a fault from High Moon. It's Hasbro, and for this reason I'll get into that later. By the end of the game I was left with a feeling of "oh sh*t". All my reviews are spoiler free so if you didn't know that the Autobots crash on Earth with the Decepticons after a big space battle, you need to get your rear end on Wikipedia for some Transformers common knowledge 101.

The more intimate story really allows for some character bonding to be had. You really begin to feel for Autobots and Decepticons alike. You feel that Optimus Prime really does have the weight of the continued existence of his species and his planet on his shoulders and secretly hoping that Starscream would catch a break every now and then. High Moon's risky strategy of cutting out co-op has really paid off with Fall Of Cybertron. On top of that, High Moon have done some great fan service here. To write a full list of reasons would be an article in itself but lets just leave it at being able to unleash Rumble and Laserbeak from Soundwave's chest.

The Gameplay

Fall Of Cybertron is a third person shooter. Note how I left out the word "typical" there, because if anything, Fall Of Cybertron is pretty unique for a linear TPS. When in robot mode your arm transforms into any gun you can equip and it's time for some bot blastin', spark exstinguishin' fun. But what happens when you're cornered or run out of ammo just as a brute is chasing you down? Why, you transform of course. And this is the reason why I play this game. Being able to transform at will completely changes the battle. As I write the review I'm playing as Vortex, a triple changing Combaticon who can transform into a helicopter and a jet. I just ran out of ammo with two Autobots about to blast me into scrap so I simply press triangle and transform into a helicopter and blast those Autoboobs with one shot from my fusion cannon (and yes, I know Megatron has the fusion cannon).

It's a fun alternative in a TPS because it changes the way you play. High Moon has developed specific level types to the characters. For example, there's a lot of open road for Optimus, wide open area's for Starscream and Autobot filled battlegrounds for Megatron. There's a lot of variety and it really is a lot of fun. Each character has their own special ability. Megatron can hover, Optimus can call in Metroplex for support, Vortex has a shockwave, Jazz and Swindle have their grappling hooks and so on.

However, a few drawbacks do hamper the experience from time to time. More than once was I subject to freezing and lag particularly in parts where a lot is going on all at once. Uninstalling the game from my hardrive and then reinstalling it seemed to work as I haven't come across it since.

The Graphics

Fall Of Cybertron has come a very long way visually since War For Cybertron. There are a still a few cases of texture pop in especially when playing as Cliffjumper for some reason but a quick transformation will kick those textures back into place. Otherwise, FOC looks great. Each transformer is greatly detailed with scuff marks all over them and light shining off of them. The transformations themselves look great and fluid. Jazz's break dancing transformation is awesome. Soundwave's is great as he kind of just stands up like the menacing bad-ass he is. Again, something that if I listed we'd be here all night.

Cybertron now looks like a more varied planet. It still looks metallic but it's no longer flat surfaces and silver corridors. You'll have terrain to manage and the sun to blind you. That's right, Cybertron has a sun.

The Sound

Another thing that stands out here is the sound. It's brilliant. The music has this big, booming epic feel to it. The sound effects on the guns are something to note as well, each gun makes a real "oomph" sound when it makes contact with a bot unlucky enough to get in the way of your projectile.

FOC also has some great dialogue. It's something that I've noticed has been pointed out as "campy" by IGN's own Mitch Dyer and he's right. But it's still great. Starscream is ever boastful of his self proclaimed leadership abilities, Jazz is smoooooooth as ever, Cliffjumper is cocky and capable and Optimus Prime is well, voiced by the one and only Peter Cullen. The dialogue skirted around during battle is very G1 reminiscent with words like "Decepti-creeps" being thrown across the to the 'cons.

The Multiplayer

Holy crap. I'm actually reviewing a game with a multiplayer component worth playing.

FOC's multiplayer had me playing for a few hours, which for me, is a damned long time when it comes to multiplayer. There are two modes of online play here, competitive and the addicting Escalation mode which is basically a Cybertronian horde mode. Multiplayer feels fresh as the ability to transform makes for some interesting battles. It's great to be engaging in a gunfight to have it turn into an ariel dogfight or a high speed chase across the map. It really mixes it up and it's more than enough reason to come back to it even though I do play the campaign a lot more.

But I know why people really want to play the multiplayer. "What's that" you ask? You can create your own Transformer. There's a wide variation of how you can make your Transformer look. Customisation isn't as diverse as it could be though. There are four classes each with their own set of customisation settings and for now, it is slightly limited but it's almost a sure fact that more DLC with more characters is on the way. We already have the Havok pack with Wheeljack, Ultra Magnus (YEEEAAAHHHH) and others as a day one DLC package for a eye-brow lifting £7.99 on the PSN store. Oh well.

The Problems

FOC's problems, whilst low in number, at times are more than annoyances. The freezing and the frame rate drops can really get quite annoying when you're really into the game and it just stops. It's something I hope that High Moon will address as quite honestly, it's a silly issue. It shouldn't happen.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I had a problem with the continuity. And now it's time to address it. You may of heard of the newish TV show Transformers Prime. It's a pretty good show, I like it. But what Hasbro are doing with Prime and FOC is trying to force them into the same continuity. And the problem with this is that it causes a lot of confusion and arguments when it really shouldn't. Think back to War For Cybertron and creative director Matt Teiger (awesome guy), describing the game as "pre-G1". Now, there are continuity errors to make these games G1 and vice versa to make it Prime. First, the Aerialbots and the Dinobots weren't on Cybertron before Earth. They were manufactured on Earth by the Autobots. And that's fine, I like the new approach in FOC with the Dinobots being the subject of Shockwaves experiments.

Oh yeah, I see the similarities now.

Secondly, these games aren't related to Prime because of many things. The appearance of Starscream, Soundwave, Optimus Prime, Brakedown (from WFC) and Bumblebee. Oh, did I mention that Bumblebee suddenly has a crushed voice chip?

What this really is, is Hasbro, the corporation that owns Transformers is trying to shoehorn two continuities together that make no sense. It's a classic example of restricting a great developer. I'd love to see what High Moon could do with their own Transformers continuity. But that said, it's not a fault of the game itself, it's just holding these games back from being a great standalone Transformers series.

The Final Verdict

I loved every second of this game. Three quarters of the time I was smiling in a fanboyish manner. High Moon really delivered here but there are a few problems that hold the game back from being truly amazing. It's been two weeks since release and it still hasn't left my console. This game isn't just a great Transformers game, it's a great game in it's own right and I would highly recommend that people play Fall Of Cybertron.

Overall, I give this game a 9 out of 10.

Like what you read? Follow me on MyIGN, help me out with a few follows but more importantly, leave a comment. I like discussion.

And as always, if you read this, You Got The Touch (do-do-do-do-do-doooo).

]]>Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:08:33 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/09/04/thewildbeard-reviews-transformers-fall-of-cybertron#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/26/i-have-100-followers
Woohoo! I've been blogging since April 2012 but I've been a member of the IGN community for a year before that. And now I have 100 followers. Which is awesome. It's a great community on here with some even greater people that are always up for discussion and who just love games, comics, films and everything in between. If you follow me and read my stuff, thank you very much. It really helps that you guys read it and give me feedback, like really, you have no idea how much I appreciate a comment. Or maybe you do, who knows? Now I have 100 followers, it's time to write way more stuff (well, at least thats the plan) and to dedicate more time to this site. MyIGN, I salute you and give you a:

HIGH FIVE!

]]>Sun, 26 Aug 2012 06:54:22 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/26/i-have-100-followers#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/23/thewildbeard-reviews-sleeping-dogs
Why does this game make me want to watch Rush Hour so much? Huh.

The Overview

Sleeping Dog places you in the undercover shoes of San Francisco Police Department officer Wei Shen recently transferred to Hong Kong to infiltrate the infamous group of Triads known as the Sun On Yee. Shen is handpicked for this mission for his history with the gangs and their affiliations in Hong Kong. Shen grew up in Hong Kong until he left with his family for America in pursuit of a better life. It is there where he became an undercover cop specialising in infiltration of Asian gangs and stateside Triads.

With Sleeping Dogs, United Front have set out to make a memorable game that borrows mechanics from many other triple A titles, most notably that of GTAIV. The funny thing is, with all of these gameplay mechanics ripped from other games, this would rightfully be seen as the opposite of innovative but by combining a flurry of different gameplay styles, United Front have made Sleeping Dogs a very unique game indeed.

The Story

As previously said, Detective Wei Shen is tasked with infilitrating a powerful group of Triads called the Sun On Yee, a real life Triad group. But this is no ordinary infiltration for Detective Shen. He know's these Triads, he grew up with them. And that is why he is perfect for the mission.

For the greatest part, Sleeping Dogs story is very good. It has many fleshed out characters, clear but powerful motives for Shen and an ever lingering feeling of confliction for our protagonist. Shen is constantly torn by his loyalty to his childhood friends and his duty as an officer of the law. The characters feel so real that I was constantly having to remind myself that they are criminals who deal in drugs, death and prostitution. But man, Jackie Ma's a nice kid.

Playing the final mission I was playing it with an avid determination to see it finished and by the time it was finished, it felt righteous. Sleeping Dogs's story isn't the best story out there, but it'll have you in it's grip throughout it's 20-25 hour story.

The Gameplay

The gameplay behind Sleeping Dogs was either the factor that would make it or break it. With so many different gameplay styles, United Front could've faltered it with ease but they didn't. They've taken gameplay aspects from other games and honed them to a well oiled and enjoyable point.

Sleeping Dogs has a huge emphasis on melee combat as you would no doubt have seen over the last few months in the demo's and trailers. It's been described as Batman: Arkham City's combat fused into a cop drama. However, its like the old and criminally overlooked Canem Canis Edit, or Bully for the non PAL regions. You'll be able to lock onto and grapple enemies and jerk them around the fight scene either punching them, throwing them or forcing them into environmental hazards like ceiling fans, ice chippers, fishhooks and many more. Perhaps the comparison to Batman comes from the difficult to master attack and counter system. Enemies will come at you with bare hands or melee weapons such as knives or pipes and you'll have to counter those moves to stay alive. Enemies are capable and deadly which lead to my demise many times which forces you to learn to fight them and learn it you must as you'll be rewarded with upgrade points which allow for you to learn better and more brutal moves in the Dojo. At first, I had a hard time getting to grips with the combat system expecting the relative ease of Arkham City but by the middle of the game, I was a Kung Fu master. Something I don't often get to say.

Gunplay is something that you'll come across a bit later in the game as guns aren't readily available as they are in GTAIV and Saints Row The Third. The gunplay borrows the much overused cover system that oh-so-many games employ now but the difference in Sleeping Dogs is that you won't be staying in cover for more than a few seconds at a time. Cover is simply a place to hide for a few seconds whilst you reload. Vaulting over cover allows you to enter a very Max Payne-esque slow motion which allows for some great opportunities to pull of headshots and rapidly reduce the amount of enemies shooting at you before you even hit the floor. It's stylish and handy.

The parkour in the game is something that I was disappointed in. Many of the trailers showed off Shen moving up and down a seemingly vertical environment with ease. Too many times I was encountering walls that by all means I should be able to scale but ended up doing the annoying failed run up on a wall that would slow me down in a chase or a time segment. The parkour generally works very well but it's quite linear. There are only certain area's that allow for it and whilst the "Central" area of the city allows for some scaling of water fountains and overpasses, I expected more. It works better in gunplay with you using it to vault over obstacles to trigger slow motion or to disarm and enemy.

Now the driving, this is something that I really liked. The driving is tight and precise and unless you're an idiot like me who crashed into about five cars because he did 100mph on a corner, you're probably going to be able to drive a long way without crashing. The only annoyance is the camera when driving. When reversing, the camera seems to almost run away and you're left looking at the area of empty space above the car. There are many places the camera will end up so I guess it'd make for an entertaining Youtube video.

Sleeping Dogs will have Wei hacking computers, CCTV camera's, safes, lockboxes, locks and many other things. Most of them all work really well apart from one. And that is the computer hacking. I seldom come across a minigame where I want to punch my television only to find that satisfaction would actually come from driving my car into it. The hacking consists of trying to unlock the key-code by inputting numbers into Wei's phone and thus unlocking the password. But the problem is that you literally have to guess the combination. It's preposterous. The password can be unlocked on your first try or your twenty fifth depending on luck alone.

The Graphics

Sleeping Dogs is set in a very vibrant Hong Kong that looks pretty in it's own right. The area of North Point is littered with fake DVD stands, food stands, various signage I don't understand because I don't read or speak Cantonese but United Front's vision of Hong Kong looks fabulous. There's the odd plain faced pedestrian but Sleeping Dogs looks good. It won't blow the doors off of the proverbial graphics hut, but it won't get any complaints either.

The Sound

The sound really comes into play with the fighting. You hear every gut churning "crunch" that comes along with breaking someones arm, leg or neck to the "goosh" sound that accompanies a bullet through the head of the average rent-a-thug. The city of Hong Kong sounds alive and vibrant almost to the heights of Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City.

Sleeping Dogs boasts some great voice acting with big names such as Tom Wilkinson, Lucy Lui and Emma Stone. The latter of which I don't understand why she was so heavily advertised as being in the game for voicing a background character thats in the background of another background but to each his own.

The Multiplayer

What multiplayer?

The Problems

The problems that accompany Sleeping Dogs aren't in a large quantity nor are they game breakers, but rather they are annoyances that can be quite frustrating. With the apparent emphasis on parkour, I was expecting Wei Shen to be the next Cole MacGrath but sadly this isn't the case. If you see something that looks the least bit climbable, it probably isn't. The parts that you can climb are clearly marked, which is fine, but it's disappointing that when the game was first showed off, parkour was this massive component in the game but closer to release, that emphasis faded.

My biggest problem with the game was by far the hacking minigame. It's just stupid. There are no hints for what the password may be even though everything else in the game has a hint mashed in your face to the point where the game is just stating the obvious. The method I ended up using was one I got off of Youtube. If you get as pissed off with it as I did, start by listing the numbers 1-4, then confirm, then move up to the next number. It's still not that easy, but at least you get somewhere slowly.

The Final Verdict

Despite some stupid problems, Sleeping Dogs is a great game that is so far the biggest surprise of 2012. Even with it's long development cycle after cheating death from Activison's cancellation of the game when it was known as "True Crime: Hong Kong", United Front have made a great game that's relevant. And by that I mean despite being in development for a good number of years, it doesn't feel old. Packed with great side missions and some very good "favour" missions, you'll find yourself coming back to Sleeping Dogs.

Overall, I give Sleeping Dogs an 8 out of 10.

Like what you read? Tell your buddies about me, follow me if you don't already or leave me a comment.

And if you read this, as FPSRussia would say, have nice day.

]]>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:43:24 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/23/thewildbeard-reviews-sleeping-dogs#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/16/the-coolest-sony-stuff-from-gamescom-2012
The biggest games convention in Europe is happening. Right now. Right this second. Well, maybe not right this second, it's 21:44 in Germany as I type this. But it's happening!

As a gamer, I've been watching it with one greatly intrigued eye and the other being the envious eye that screams "WHY AM I NOT AT GAMESCOM!!!!!?????". What I'm going to give you here is a low down on what I've seen from Sony. Since there's no Nintendo or Microsoft here, this blog is going to seem like a random one off. But hey, Sony showed some cool stuff here. A few new games were shown off like Killzone: Mercenary, Rain, Tear Away alongside new features for the Vita like the control over your PS3. But mostly, it's just games that we're seeing so far. And that's good.

Killzone: Mercenary

Right, so what we have here is a live action trailer and nothing more. No release date, no details on story, setting, no gameplay details. But hell, we got a damned nice trailer with some gameplay, details on the developer and an idea of how the game would play. Lets start with the developer. Mercenary is being developed by Guerilla, the developer of all the past Killzone games. Obviously, this a good thing as Guerilla are one hell of a developer. I haven't played a more atmospheric shooter than Killzone 2, a game which well and truly blew me away with what the PS3 could do. The opening mission on the Corinth river is by far one of my favourite levels in a video game to date. Now what's interesting is that Mercenary is not being developed by Sony Cambridge who were said to be developing a Killzone game for the Vita. Could we possibly see another Killzone game on the Vita? I hope so but I'm happy that Guerilla are doing this one.

What we see in the trailer is a live action teaser showing some kind of special ops mercenary's moving through a compound/city on what appears to be Helghan on the hunt for their target. Along the way they take down two ISA soliders and a single Helghast before identifying their target via a communication device located on the wrist. The trailer then cuts to us being treated by a mere 15 or so seconds of gameplay which show off a taste of how the game may play. We see some of the QTE takedowns similar to that of Killzone 3 and Uncharted: Golden Abyss and we see some text book FPS shooting. In every screen there's some kind of meter where killing targets gets you more cash. Now what could this mean? Could there be an actual story or could it be like Unit 13 and the new COD for the Vita with objective based missions? Could it just be on Helghan or could it also be on Vekta and beyond(!)?.

One thing we do know is that from the 15 seconds or so that we saw, it looks great. The graphics look very up to date and very similar to the console counterparts. It's something to look forward to.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Declassified

You can see it here, it doesn&#Array;t look very nice and doesn&#Array;t take advantage of the OLED screen.

Think back to Sony's press conference at E3 2012 this past June and you may recall a poster with the title for the new Call Of Duty Vita game. Well now we're actually getting a full trailer with gameplay. And it looks exactly like COD. Seriously, the trailer is just shooting, shooting and more shooting. The trailer boasts new multiplayer maps and, wait for it, 4 on 4 multiplayer matches. Woohoo. I was disappointed for this trailer as I was hoping for something new in a COD handheld game but we see zip in the trailer. It's just shooting with breaks of text saying "CALL OF DUTY...ON THE VITA" reminding me of Brian Altano's Up At Noon sketch's. I'll have to wait to see what it's like, but for now, I'm unimpressed.

I'm even more unimpressed at the developer behind it being Nihilistic. Perhaps why Burning Skies wasn't that good is because they were working on this. Who knows?

The Last Of Us

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! This game is shaping up to be a good one. A damned good one. This new trailer see's Joel and Ellie driving along in a car with Ellie handing Joel a tape containing the song "Alone And Forsaken" by Hank Williams Sr, the same song featured in the ambush cinematic. It then cuts to some stuff we've seen and some stuff we have't such as the aftermath of their car crash in the ambush trailer. The trailer is a brutal montage of Joel beating the shit out of the guys in the hotel and vice versa. The whole trailer had my jaw located somewhere down by my knee's simply because of how good the game looks. The gameplay and cinematics look almost indistinguishable. Hopefully we'll get a new demo but right now, I'm content with this great trailer.

Vita Firmware Update 1.80/Crosscontroller

The latest firmware for the Vita enabling PS1 Classics support previously announced at E3 2012 will be incoming on the 28th of August 2012. Not only will the update allow for PS1 games to be played (PLEASE RELEASE TOMBI IN THE UK!!!), but it'll also allow for the Vita to be used as controller for the PS3. The Crosscontroller function will be added into the Livearea screen on the Vita allowing for quick and easy access. Speaking of Crosscontroller Beardway (see what I did there), take a look at the demo below.

This is the announced DLC pack for LittleBigPlanet 2 that allows for the Vita to act like the WiiU's controller. Now, I suspect that the idea for this functionality had been hatched a while ago so no accusations of Sony nicking more of Nintendo's ideas . The Vita being used as a controller is extremely cool as you can see in the demo. An example of how it'll work is that the Vita will act as a second screen for the PS3. In the demo we saw a map displayed on the Vita screen that highlighted hazard zones that Sackboy must avoid to prevent being fried. These hazard spots aren't shown on the screen so you'll have to rely on the Vita to get yourself through it. With the 4 player multiplayer, three players will be on a PS3 with the fourth being on the Vita. From what I understand the Vita player will act as a guide in area's like this. Another cool feature shown was the ability manipulate objects on the PS3 screen using the Vita. In the demo, the player picks up a box and moves across the screen making it look as if the box is moving by itself.

As a Vita owner, I'm pretty excited for this as we're finally getting some good ways to use the cross function features on the Vita.

Playstation Allstars Battle Royale

Whats new about Playstation Allstars this time? Well I'll tell you: yet more new characters. The latest ones to be unveiled are Dante from the new Devil May Cry, Ratchet and Clank, Sackboy and Spike from Ape Escape. Yes, Ape Escape. The latter being the best announcement here. Along with new characters will come new some levels such as Alden's Tower from the first inFamous game.

Crossbuy

What is Crossbuy I hear you ask? Well this is admittedly a really cool new idea Sony have come up with that will give you a free Vita game. What you do is buy a game like Playstation Allstars, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time or Ratchet And Clank: Full Frontal Assault on the PS3 and you will automatically have free access to the Vita counterparts to those games. This is a pretty smart move on Sony's part on paper at least. Hopefully this will shift Vita's but I guess we'll have to wait and see. And you can't argue that it's a bad deal, you're getting a free game. The Vita version of Playstation Allstars is being developed by a different developer so in essence, you're getting a different game. And that to me, is pretty great and I'm 100% on board with it.

God Of War: Ascension Beta

No doubt you've seen the new God Of War game and I'm sure it's a given that you've all seen the multiplayer. I still stand by the fact that I don't think that God Of War needs it but I'll be interested to try it out. The idea behind Ascensions multiplayer is that you pick a team worshipping Poseidon, Zeus, Hades or Ares and your team will have attacks based on those gods. So for example Zeus' team will have lighting magic attacks and so on. The more you win, the more XP you get to unlock weapons, armour and magic and so on and so forth.

No details were given about when this beta would go live other than that it'll be revealed close to the games March 2013 release date.

]]>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 02:25:17 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/16/the-coolest-sony-stuff-from-gamescom-2012#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/10/dear-greg-miller
Ok guys, so I just heard the news about Greg Miller's diagnosis with cancer an hour and 15 minutes ago whilst I finished my shift at work and just raced home to write this.

So for those of you who may not know, Greg was recently diagnosed with cancer yesterday. According to his doctors, it's one of the most treatable but at the end of the day, it's still a punch to the guts to him and to those of us who watch his video's, listen to his appearances on both Beyond! and Gamescoop and read his previews, reviews and editorials.

I write this without the intention to gain a few followers, get a few comments or expand my writing prowess but rather as a heads up to those who may not follow Greg on Twitter or MyIGN. If you read this, please, go onto his Twitter, go onto his blog and wish him all the best and support him. Hell, even if you hate him, be nice and leave a positive comment. His lair review wasn't that bad.

Anyway, I felt as if I had to write this quickly. I love Greg Miller, he makes me laugh like an idiot when I'm on the bus, the train or driving my car. So Greg, I doubt you'll ever read this but if you do, we have your back man and you have our support. To you, I give a hearty BEYOND!!!!!!

]]>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:29:42 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/10/dear-greg-miller#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/06/so-what-do-you-listen-to
Now, I read a lot of blogs on MyIGN as I'm sure the rest of you do. I have a pretty good idea of what you guys are playing, what your favourite games are, what games you like and what games you hate. I was just reading Gadrastus's latest blog and even though he's done it before, I was reading his "What I'm listening to" segment and it got me wondering what you guys listen to.

Now, it's a bit hard for me to pin-point what I love more, games or metal music. And I'm not talking Slipknot or any of that rubbish (no offence), I'm talking about Sabbath, Dio, Priest, Anthrax and Iron Maiden amongst others. What is clear to me is that I love Iron Maiden more than games and metal combined. Lately I've been listening to a lot of film and video game soundtracks, bit weird I know but listening to Metal Gear Solid whilst driving feels bad-ass. However, I'll always go back to listening to my metal albums.

What I want from you guys is to tell me what your favourite band/album is and tell me why, I'd love to know.

My favourite album is Iron Maiden's most recent, The Final Frontier. It came out in 2010 and is pretty progressive and it's one of those....epic albums. I don't know if there are any Maiden fans on here but as a whole, true Maiden fans are like brothers and sisters who pretty much love everything Maiden put out. But the problem is that you do occasionally get "fans" that only like the 80's stuff and think the new stuff sucks. And those people are the reasons why capital punishment was invented (joke). The reason I love this band so much is because of their integrity and a total and famous unwillingness to be pressured into making music people want to hear and it pays off. They're bigger than they ever were and any metal fan who knows his arse from his elbow will be able to recognise Maiden as the best metal band.

But I digress.

The Final Frontier hit me like a train fired out of a cannon fired out of the Death Star. I really had no idea what to expect when I bought the album but it blew me away. I must have listened to this album in full more than eighty times since release. They released two songs prior to release, the first El Dorado they played when I saw them for the first time. And what a first Maiden gig it was. The punishing sound of Steve Harris's bass was just so immense I was humming it for a good 24 hours afterwards. This album came out just a few days short of two years ago and I still get goosebumps when I listen to it. It may be my favourite album, but my favourite Maiden song is "The Prisoner" from 1981's "Number Of The Beast". Man, that song is so good.

So anyway guys, sorry to bore you but let me know what you listen to in the comments below.

Like what you read? Tell your friends, shout my username from the rooftops or just follow me on MyIGN.

If you read this, keep up being awesome and UP THE IRONS.

]]>Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:50:03 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/08/06/so-what-do-you-listen-to#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/23/thewildbeard-reviews-the-dark-knight-rises
I think I can speak for all of us when I say how excited I am that Christopher Nolan's next and final chapter in the Dark Knight trilogy is now here. It's been four long years, but it's finally arrived. And it's brilliant.

The Overview

The Dark Knight Rises is set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse in Wayne Manor with his days as Batman long behind him. Gotham City has emerged victorious in the war against organised crime with the example of Harvey Dent as the motivation see the streets of Gotham clean of criminal scum. It is at this point that see's the arrival of Bane, a mysterious mercenary with sinister plans for Batman and the people of Gotham.

The Story

The phrase I would use for this film would be "well orchestrated". This film has so many working parts yet they all fit together and work so well. A film with this much content could so easily fall victim to various plot holes but Nolan pieces it all together so well it's amazing when remembering that this wasn't a planned trilogy.

However, this film isn't a Batman centric film as much as it is a Bruce Wayne film. It's been eight years since he donned the cape and cowl and it's been a near decade of self hate and a detachment from the remaining few around him that love him. As Bruce Wayne, this is Christian Bales best performance yet as he takes Bruce Wayne to the level of being a real character in this series.

The Dark Knight Rises opens and finishes with a bang but it's not the kind of explosions and gunfire kind of action that we see in other superhero films. It remains grounded in reality. The first seven minutes of the film might just be the coolest opening to a film I've seen in a really long time.

Wait, what?

Now, this is a very long film indeed and it's remarkable that non of the content feels dry or boring at any point. Many parts had me on the edge of my seat especially the parts where we see Bane's plans for Gotham come into fruition. Only so much can be said for the films story if I am to keep it spoiler free so lets move on but you have it on good authority that the story will blow you away.

The Presentation

As you should all know by now, Nolan's Batman is far less comic book more realism and that still holds true. The scale of the film is absolutely huge but it still stays in a realistic light and is somewhat plausible as to how Bane could pull off his plans.

The use of CGI is fairly limited and is used only when absolutely necessary in this film and that's a great thing. It allows for the viewer to marvel at the size of the set pieces. The scene from the trailer with hundreds of GCPD officers running down the street towards Bane's soldiers is truly epic just because of the sheer scale of the set piece. It really gives off the feeling of a war zone and is epic in the proper sense of the word.

The Perfomances

Christian Bale

Christian Bale possibly pulls of his performance of his entire career in this film. He portrays the inner torment and self hatred of Bruce Wayne so well as well as his devotion to the people of Gotham and selflessly sacrificing what he loves for what is right. This is a darker Bruce Wayne so the witty remarks and the toy boy attitude are less visible in this film and Bale really stands out in delivering Bruce Wayne.

Tom Hardy

Now, the problem with Bane as the villain after the Joker in The Dark Knight is that the two are going to be compared. This would happen if Killer Croc was the villain. The truth is that Bane and the Joker are two very different villains. The Joker is all about creating utter chaos and Bane always remains firmly in control and is meticulous in his planning of Gotham's downfall. But Bane is a great villain, Tom Hardy's performance is absolutely brilliant and redeems the cinema's portray as Bane as a hulking mindless monster from Joel Schumachers Batman. He portrays Bane exactly how he should be portrayed as the scheming, genius muscleman. He sounds great not only with his characters dialogue but with the way he sounds as well. He sort of sounds like an evil Sean Connery but it still sounds menacing and fear instilling.

Anne Hathaway

I won't lie here, I was one of the many who highly doubted Anne Hathaway's ability to portray Selina Kyle and I'm delighted to say that I was wrong. Very wrong. In The Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle is a thief and a good one at that. Hathaway does a really good job of making the character seem sassy as she should be. Hathaway is no doubt an attractive woman but she's exploited in this film as sexy so you can take the character seriously.

Michael Caine

Caine returns as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth in the best portrayal as the character yet. The screen time he gets is spent trying to urge Bruce not to take up the cape and cowl again and to let the police handle Bane and his forces. He delivers the role so convincingly you'd think Michael Caine had raised Christian Bale in real life as well. My only complaint is that he doesn't receive as much screen time as I would like.

The Problems

Quite honestly, nothing in this film really bothered me aside from Michael Cane's lack of screen time. The film is just so very good and I genuinely have a hard time in finding a film, book or game that has such few problems. There are a few seemingly present plot holes that I can't discuss but after talking them over with people who have seen the film I can honestly say that they don't bother me that much. One particular "plot hole" is easy to explain and you'll hopefully be able to explain it yourself when you see the film.

The Final Verdict

I absolutely adore The Dark Knight Rises and it is probably my favourite film of the last few years. X-Men First Class is the closest runner up to it. So few films in the last couple of years have gripped me the way The Dark Knight Rises did. I'm going to see this film a second time and the last film I saw a second time was the first Transformers film.

This film is so well written, so graciously put together, the performances are all top notch from the biggest roles to the smallest. Christopher Nolan has done a remarkable job at reinventing Batman for the cinema and his trilogy will no doubt be heralded as the definitive Batman films for years to come. I struggle to comprehend how someone could do a better job.

Overall, and this not lightly, I give The Dark Knight Rises a 10 out of 10.

]]>Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:18:22 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/23/thewildbeard-reviews-the-dark-knight-rises#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/20/guys-i-need-your-help
For the past month, I've been subject to annoying phone calls from some call centre asking for a "Mrs. Jones". Now, my surname is Sinclair and not Jones. There are no Jones in my family, the previous inhabitants of my house weren't called Jones and since I've lived here for 20 years, so no Mrs. Jones. I've told them "you have the wrong number" every time they phone. They ring my house about four to six times a week. Now I'm fighting back.

They rang me today asking for the phantom Mrs. Jones so what did I do? I said "Yeah, one second mate, I'll get here for you. MRS. JONES!!! GET YOUR F*CKING ARSE DOWN HERE NOWWWW!!!! MRS. JONES!!!!! She's just coming mate. MRS. JONES". The result was hilarious, I could hear the guy stuttering as a result.

Now, I know those twats will phone again so I'm asking you, people of MyIGN, how should I prank them next? I was thinking of forcing the guy to talk in a squeaky voice before I'll let him talk to "Mrs. Jones".

What do you think guys? Want to help me screw with these guys? Let me know in the comments below.

Like what you read? Follow me on MyIGN, forget about my Twitter.

If you read this, BEYOND.

]]>Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:26:04 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/20/guys-i-need-your-help#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/18/the-combination-of-metal-and-video-game-music
If you haven't gathered by my display picture of Eddie the mascot of the legendary Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden, I'm a metal fan. That's right, I'm a narrow minded and thick skulled individual unwilling to change. At least when it comes to Heavy Metal. Nu-Metal? No thanks. Metalcore? Stay still whilst I beat you. Pop Music? How the hell did I get here?

Heavy Metal is one of my many loves in life along with gaming, Transformers, Star Wars, comics, films and like minded people. So when I find this dude called 331Erock on Youtube, I was a very happy man. This dude covers theme songs from TV shows, metalises Pop songs and covers video game music.

Here, let me show you.

I must have listened to this song about 30 times now. It's that good.

Now this goes well with mead drinking, dragon slaying, troll hunting, bandit killing like a house on fire.

For all you Colin Moriartys out there. BEYOND!

Final Fantasy X being my favourite Final Fantasy and one of my favourite games of all time, I wish he'd made a whole FFX video but this is just as good.

]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:45:27 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/18/the-combination-of-metal-and-video-game-music#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/17/thewildbeard-reviews-the-amazing-spiderman
Ok, I'm really behind on my blogging here so lets bang this one out. Yeah. Bang. Time for me to swing into action on this one.

The Overview

The Amazing Spiderman explains itself. It's a new film about Spiderman, the wall crawling teenage hero from Queens, New York. The Amazing Spiderman is a complete reboot of the well known Toby Maguire Spiderman franchise that spawned two very good films. Yes, two good ones. It sets out to retell the story of Spiderman in a somewhat familiar but at the same time refreshing manner. Marc Webbs reboot of this franchise is arguably an audacious one at that seeing how Sam Raimi's films are very well established as the Spiderman films. I'll be the first to admit I questioned "why" when I heard of the new film and quite honestly, I'm glad that they made this film. The Amazing Spiderman packs some good action, some solid performances and some of the cleanest sewers I've seen in a film. Despite this being a reboot, it's inevitably going to be compared to the predecessor not just by me, but by others.

The Story

The Amazing Spiderman retells the well known tale of Spiderman and follows the beloved superhero from his life as Peter Parker, the social ghost in his high school to the bold, daring web-slinger, Spiderman. Something is touched on in this film that wasn't explained at all in Sam Raimi's trilogy and that is the inclusion of Peter Parkers parents. As we've all learnt from the comics, Peter's father was involved in some top secret work and this is used in the film as Richard Parker has ties to Oscorp, the company belonging to the villainous Norman Osborne.

The significance of Richard Parker's work at Oscorp sets a good story for the film but it isn't what makes this film. It's easier for epic tales to be told in comic books that it is for a two hour. What makes this film is the performances but we'll get to that. Overall, the story is ok. It's not amazing (pun alert) and it's not bad, it's just another origins story. Since this is a reboot, an origins story is somewhat necessary and it would be a risky and an assumption that you've seen the films and read the comics.

The Presentation

This being a Spiderman film, it would undoubtably have some spectacular scenes of Spiderman's acrobatic prowess. And it does. The film looks great and is a nice refreshment from the surprisingly outdated Spiderman from 2002. We all remember the first trailer that was compared to Mirrors Edge with the use of a first person camera angle. This camera view is used a few times in the film and they look very, very cool. They're not overused and whilst they're used sparingly, the novelty of it doesn't get old and they're still enjoyable.

The Lizard himself has a very cool new look to him and whilst there's a few nods to the traditional Lizard look with the torn lab coat, they've made the Lizard look different in a way we don't often see with him. He still looks like Rhys Ifans when he's transformed and for a reptile human hybrid, you can still see Curt Connors in there albeit a mad version of himself. He's not just some mindless monster, he knows what his agenda is and he knows how to deal with obstacles to his plans I.E Spiderman.

Spiderman's suit has also gone under a new redesign which is more drastic to Toby Maquire's suit which was very similar to the comics save from the spider design on the torso and back. The new suit is very cool and has one big difference, the utilisation of web-shooters on the wrists. Whilst the organic webbing in the last few films was pretty cool, it's nice to see it staying true to the comics.

The Performances

Andrew Garfield

As the lead role, Andrew Garfield is brilliant. He's something that Toby Maguire never was as Spiderman. He throws out sarcastic quips left and right as Spiderman and as Peter Parker he remains more of an outsider than an awkward nerd. Garfield really fits into the role of Peter Parker/Spiderman so well it's as if the part was made for him.

Emma Stone

Emma Stone's performance really hits a charm with the audience because of how well the chemistry between her character, Gwen Stacy works with Peter Parker. The two really complement each other and still emphasise the fact that Spiderman despite his superhero name, is still a teenager.

Rhys Ifans

I have to admit, when I saw Rhys Ifans cast as the Lizard I was surprised at first but his performance hushed my questioning. Whilst we've seen the role of the super smart scientist gone rogue before as we did with Alfrid Molina (who still remains my favourite villain in the last set of films), Ifans does a capable job of playing Dr. Curt Connors.

Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen plays Uncle Ben, the ill fated uncle of Peter Parker whose death spurs Peter into becoming Spiderman. (Thats not a spoiler, everyone knows that). I just wish he was in it for a little bit longer. Martin Sheen's pretty damned good in every film he's in and this was no exception. What I liked is that Uncle Ben and Aunt May weren't ancient like they were in the last films.

The Problems

The Amazing Spiderman suffers from a few minor problems that in no way bring down the film terribly but do save it from being....amazing. Sorry, had to do it. The biggest drawback is the all too familiar story despite the fact that it's necessary for a reboot. I would've liked to see what they could've done with the story if they started the film with Peter Parker already as Spiderman.

The second drawback is that Rhys Ifans as the Lizard didn't really grip in the memorable bad guy department. He's capable but I didn't feel for his inner torment the way I did with Doc Ock in Spiderman 2.

The Final Verdict

The Amazing Spiderman is one of the best films this year and still stands out in the sea of annual superhero movies with the Iron Men and the Captain America's. Just a few drawbacks save it from being the superhero film this summer.

Overall, I'm giving this film an 8 out of 10

Like what you read? Help me out by following me on MyIGN. It's always good to hear feedback.

As always, if you read this. You rock.

]]>Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:46:39 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/17/thewildbeard-reviews-the-amazing-spiderman#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/06/remember-mirrors-edge
Does anyone remember Mirrors Edge? Of course you do. It was that beautifully visual game placing you as Faith, a "runner" in a totalitarian city where free speech is a thing of the past and the only word is the official word. What made Mirrors Edge really stand out was it's use of a first person camera but with a twist, you were an expert in parkour which itself is something of an overused theme in modern gaming. The result of the two is something we'd never seen before, you were seeing the world through Faith, the main character, own eyes in the truest sense. What was cool is that you when you looked down, you could see her lower torso, arms, legs and feet. The best thing was is that it didn't look crap or wooden. Remember 2010's Alien Vs Predator? Yeah? Then you know what I'm talking about.

What made this game even more memorable is that it came from Dice who we all know are famous for that game series. It showed off just what Dice are capable of as a developer and just how creative they could be. Mirrors Edge is vastly unlike anything Dice had done since 2002 with the release of Battlefield 1942. What we had here was a free-running, first person action game with beautiful graphics and a unique visual style that simply just disappeared off of the map after release.

After the game released, it got a lot of praise but people were critical of a few things, namely the story. Now, I consider myself a story gamer, I play games for the story. There are good stories, there are ok stories and there are bad stories. Mirrors Edge had an ok story. Sure, some bits were a bit random and the whole "conspiracy" theme is quite hard to pull off and is easily screwed up if done wrong. It was ok, passable. But then again, who picked up Mirrors Edge for the story?

The second and last of the problems was the trial and error gameplay. I mean, Mirrors Edge did trial and error like nothing else. Timing was absolutely paramount. Get it right, you feel like a damned hero. Screw it up like I've done so many times, you hear that horrible thump sound when Faith hits the pavement. But as tricky as it could be, I never put down Mirrors Edge in a fit of frustration. It was just fun to play no matter how many times I fell to my untimely death.

But does anyone remember that interview in October 2008 with the games senior producer, Owen O'brian? No? Well he revealed that Mirrors Edge was always intended to be a trilogy. And after the ending of the last game, I'd like a sequel exploring the repercussions of Faith's actions in the game and what impact the city's actions against runners will have on its hold over the city. But alas, who the hell knows what's going on? In 2009 it was revealed that development for a sequel had started. Then it was said by an EA official that nothing was solid and then later on in February 2011, it was revealed that production of the sequel had stopped. Then we later got confirmation at E3 2011 that the sequel was coming, possibly on the Frostbite 2 engine. It's now been a yer and we've heard nothing from Dice or EA. Que sad face.

So why has nothing happened with a sequel? Does anyone care about Mirrors Edge? Do you care? Let me know in the comments be-low.

Like what you read? Follow me on MyIGN.

And as always, if you read this, hats off to you. You're awesome.

]]>Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:46:24 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/06/remember-mirrors-edge#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/04/the-strange-case-of-battlefront-3
No doubt we all saw the Battlefront 3 footage from a few years ago and were pretty impressed with the potential of the game. And I'm assuming that we've now seen the article put up by Daniel Krupa of IGNUK showing us a link to a Youtube video of an hours worth newly arisen footage from Battlefront 3. Now, the footage is pre-alpha so it looks pretty horrendous by today's standards but it's interesting to see the idea's Free Radical had floating around.

From what's in the video, it's clear that in terms of how Battlefront 3 played, very little had changed from the last two iterations and that's just fine with me. Players were still placed in big open maps and were given objectives to secure with the options to wage war on the ground in vehicles or participate in space battles. The changes to this one were that the maps looks much, much bigger and you could fly into space without any loading times or cutscenes. Watch the video below at the 2:23 mark for an example.

Something else I noticed were the "bonus cards" which you seem to get when taking objectives and killing enemies. These cards are basically perks by the looks of things that work towards the team rather than the player. See the 14:01 mark in the first video.

Another returning mechanic was the use of Heroes I.E. Darth Vader, Boba Fett, IG-88 and Obi-Wan Kenobi. They looked pretty much the same as in the last few games but with one new edition: they were available in space combat. Go to 1:31 in the video below to see Slave 1, Boba Fett's personal ship.

Space combat looks the same as past games as well although in the video above we see some more of the air-to-ground gameplay at the 6:47 mark. Obviously, this is pre-alpha footage but you get some idea of the sense of the games scale and whilst it's not that impressive here, this could totally be possible on a console today. Think back to Just Cause 2, that games sense of scale was enormous. You could fly to dizzying heights in real time with no trouble at all.

Another new edition was the split screen hero duels where players look like they would be able to select a hero character like Han Solo and pit him against Count Dooku. Check out the video below what looks like pre-pre-alpha (I know, I'm just making fun) and you can see the basics of how this would work. You pick a character, pick a map and duel it out.

Battlefront 3 also sported a new and more focused story with cutscenes as opposed to Battlefront 2's recycled game footage in the place of cutscenes. The video is dubbed over with some music but you can see two characters in the Clone Wars era talking and interacting with each other in a cutscene where they are attacked by Separatists. The animations look pretty good for pre-alpha which leads me to believe that Free Radical could have been making use of motion capture technology, something Lucasarts has been using for a while now.

What officially happened

As we all should know, the reason why we all haven't got this game in our collection is because the developer at the time, Free Radical Design is no longer in business and are now known as Crytek UK. Free Radical Design was the studio that brought us the Timesplitters franchise and were a pretty competent developer so it's fair to assume that Battlefront 3 was in good hands. However, at some point down the line, Free Radical lost the contract to develop Battlefront 3 and it's rumoured that Rebellion took up the contract but they ended up doing Elite Squadron for the PSP and DS.

A few years later, it was rumoured that Spark Unlimited were doing the game. You know, that developer that's infamous for Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty? Thankfully, they revealed that the game they're working on is Lost Planet 3 (or is it Dead Space 3?). Some Star Wars models and textures were then discovered in Resident Evil: Racoon City's archives for some strange reason and they're thought to be possible content from BF3.

Ultimately, I'll be surprised if we ever hear what's really going on with that game.

What COULD be going on

Now, you see comments such as "WE WANT BATTLEFRONT 3" as the voted top comment on every Star Wars game article, video or forum on the internet and it raises the question, what ARE Lucasarts doing with it? I think the answer probably lies in some lawyers files somewhere and the reason why we don't have it could be due to some kind of licensing mess.

Or could it be that Lucasarts are taking the same stance the Square Enix is taking to those fans that want a Final Fantasy 7 remake and just want to focus on new games and look to the future. Personally I think that if they made this game, Lucasarts would have enough money to build a Deathstar. Out of chocolate. But hey, who knows?

Like what you read? Follow me on MyIGN.

If you read this, the force is with you a hell of a lot more than it is with Battlefront 3.

]]>Wed, 04 Jul 2012 11:46:10 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/04/the-strange-case-of-battlefront-3#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/02/thewildbeard-reviews-spec-ops-the-line
Spec Ops The Line looks like your standard latest entry in the 10 military shooters a year group but this game will surprise you. It will surprise you a lot.

The Overview

Spec Ops The Line places you in the boots of veteran soldier Captain Martin Walker sent into Dubai to search for survivors of the cataclysmic sandstorms that ravaged the city six months prior to the events in this game. On top of that, a US Marines Colonel named John Konrad who stayed in Dubai along with his regiment known as "The Damned 33rd" to evacuate the civilians but was never heard from again until a radio message is received from Konrad and you're sent in along with two other men that make up the three man squad that is Delta. But as you arrive, it's clear that things have gone very, very wrong.

The Story

The story in Spec Ops is why you are playing this game. It's a dark tale filled with violence, remorse, regret, anger and shock. As the story progresses you see Walker, Adams and Lugo start out as the usual military "just another day" soliders and by the end of the game will be snapping at each others words, arguing, commenting on your actions and will eventually become broken, battered and scared shadows of the men that entered Dubai. It's clear that whilst these men have seen combat, nothing has prepared them for the horrors of what lies ahead.

As previously said, you are sent in to find survivors after the almost apocalyptic sandstorms that have not only destroyed Dubai, but have seemingly claimed the lives of Konrad and the 33rd. It's not long until you find out that things are bad in Dubai. What remains of the local populace is now formed in a militia with CIA operatives pulling the strings who are at war with the 33rd. And you're stuck in the middle trying to survive.

The tone in Spec Ops is a violent one but it is not gratuitous like so many games on the market. The violence has reasons behind it and fits in with the story. I've ripped people in two in games like God Of War for less than what was done to Walker in Spec Ops yet executing a wounded man lying on the ground and seeing the horror in his face as he tries to fight off his final seconds before I send a bullet through his brains feels so much more real and disturbing. You see some horrifying things in Spec Ops which serve as a fresh reminded of what man is capable of doing to one another. The way the story handles violence is good as it never feels forced or just there for the sake of it. As Walker moves through the perhaps disappointingly short story, he becomes more and more unstable. During combat early on he's more likely to say "enemy down" when shooting a foe and gradually begins to say things like "got you, you fucker". You can see how the stress has affected Walker and you can appreciate and understand it.

What makes the story special here is the theme of having no heroes in war. You are just here to try and survive. There are points in the game where the story forces you to make decisions in intense situations. After some of them I felt a stinging sense of guilt whereas one later on (you'll know it when you play it), you're forced into another of these situations and I found myself questioning my morality but I was so enraged by an event in the story that I just didn't care for the alternative. It was a real heat of the moment situation and few games can do this for me.

It's also worth remarking how good the characters are. Nolan North voices Walker with Christoper Reid voicing Adams and Omar Abtahi voicing Lugo. The characters feel real and I can emphasise with them in the game. I can't delve into this too much in the interest of keeping this review spoiler free but it's really impressive how Yager made me feel for characters so strongly in such a short amount of time let alone that these are new characters for the Spec Ops franchise.

The only gripes with Spec Ops' story is that I wish it was longer. It didn't feel rushed nor the content packed in but it was short. I wanted more half the time and for the first half of the game was considering trading it in when I was done. Thankfully Spec Ops' true colours then flourished and I had the dark, provocative game I'd been looking forward to.

The Gameplay

Spec Ops does nothing new here and for the most part, thats fine given that the story is the strongest factor here. Whilst there are some interesting gameplay mechanics such as shooting glass to bring down sand upon your enemies in a heated firefight, they were few and far between. The combat consists of shooting from cover, moving to cover, healing your team members if need be and then getting back into cover. However the shooting itself was tight and precise. Your enemies will go down with two or three bullets in quick succession but so will you so you would find it extremely difficult to run and gun.

The AI here was pretty good and I don't think this is something many other reviews have paid much attention to. Whilst I was sitting behind cover, I was able to hear the enemy relay orders and support to one another in a dynamic manner. One mission had me using a sniper rifle and one quick shot to the head later, my fallen foe's comrade was telling his men to focus fire on the sniper I.E me. They'll dog you all over the battlefield in efforts to flush you out with grenades or try to catch you off guard by flanking you which forces you to maintain concentration and alertness in a firefight. Your teammates are also competent as well. They will surpress the enemy when you order them to, they'll take down as many troops as you can and they'll take down targets you assign to them.

Whilst gameplay here is competent I found some aspects pretty rusty. The cover button and the sprint button are the same thing and I was in many situations where I wanted to break out of cover to sprint to more cover in the shape of a conveniently placed concrete only to have Walker stand up and be punished with a headshot. You get used to it, but couple it with Walkers clunky movements and it gets annoying from time to time.

The Graphics

The graphics in Spec Ops start off a bit like the game itself. At first it looks pretty unremarkable with cover dotted all over the place in open sandy skirmish grounds. But as soon as you make your way into the city and start witnessing the horror of whats happening in Dubai, it starts to flourish and show off just how good Spec Ops looks.

Buildings glisten in the sunlight and bright colours show off the grand design of the interiors despite being in disrepair and ruin. The refugee's have formed their own little communities in the ruins of Dubai and this is another example of the great detail the team at Yager have put into this game. These camps are littered with the evidence of humanity. Trinkets, photographs and the such are adorned in the tents and makeshift living quarters the refugees inhabit. Guns have all the details nicely highlighted, the uniforms the soldiers wear show evidence of battle and really show the hardships of living in a destroyed Dubai.

Facial animation for the most part is very good. Walker and the gang look very good in cutscenes but during gameplay Walkers mouth moved a bit like a ventriloquists dummy at times but its not that much of a problem. A very nice touch that I don't often see displayed in games is the visual stress on Walkers face. In combat he'll grit his teeth and/or wince at incoming fire that's just a bit too close for comfort. Despite some texture pop ins early on Spec Ops looks very, very nice and the attention to detail in the environment is something that should be noticed.

The Sound

The sound in Spec Ops had me quite early on. Not so much in the music, I've seen violent fights and firefights with rock music blaring over it before again and again. I've already mentioned it but what got me was the enemy relaying commands to each other in an effort to kill you. They react dynamically to your actions in the field often telling each other to target you when you take down a couple of their friends in quick succession. It's just small touches like this that make the skirmishes just that bit more realistic. The guns sounds good and echo when fired in enclosed spaces, grenades explode with a satisfying bang and the voice acting in particular is superb.

The voice talent of the three main characters worked really very well indeed. At the beginning they made it believable that these men were friends on top of being comrades and then as we drew closer to the end they really portrayed the feeling that the characters felt to me.

The Multiplayer

I think Spec Ops The Line is one of those games that didn't need multiplayer. If you read my first blog back in April you'd understand how I feel about tacked on multiplayer. It's nothing special to delve into but it consists of modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch and objective based games. You're able to gain XP to unlock guns, perks and modifications to your character. It wasn't much fun to play and I doubt I'll ever be playing it.

The Problems

As good as this game is, it's not without it's problems. The biggest two being some of the gameplay and the multiplayer. Having the sprint button and the cover button mapped to the same place causes some frustration in the heat of combat which led to my death on more than one occasion. Another thing that disappointed me was how little the environment was used in the final product. I love the idea of shooting sand to bury my enemies and it didn't get old but I just wish there were more opportunities to do this as it would have greatly spiced up the combat.

Multiplayer, whilst boring and uninspired isn't a deal-breaker (and nor is the combat) but I really feel like it was placed by a studio who wasn't confident that their game be well received. If it exists, that concern doesn't have any place here as this is a very good game and has been received as such.

My last gripe and not so much as a problem is the length of the campaign. It takes about 6-7 hours to complete which is normal for a game in this current generation but I wish it was longer as I wanted to see what Yager is really capable of. They've made a game that stands on top of the beaten horse that is the FPS/Military Shooter genre.

The Final Verdict

Spec Ops The Line is worth your time and you should play it. I think this game is the surprise game of 2012 and this is a good thing. Yager have done an excellent job of making a military shooter that stands out amongst the competition and is exactly what the FPS/Military Shooter genre has needed for the last few years. This game isn't going to draw in the Call Of Duty or Battlefield fans, it's going to attract the mature gamer. The story is what will be drawing them in and with the multiple choices in the game with multiple endings, you have good reason to replay this. When you're finished with this game, you're going to be left thinking what you could have done better, how you could've had a better outcome but no matter what you do, the right call isn't the right call, it's just a choice soldiers have to make and live with.

I give this game an 8.5 out of 10

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If you survived Spec Ops, you're awesome. Thanks for reading.

]]>Mon, 02 Jul 2012 08:17:22 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/07/02/thewildbeard-reviews-spec-ops-the-line#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/06/22/thewildbeard-reviews-gravity-rush
Gravity Rush is one of the games I bought a Vita for, and after the long, long, incredibly long wait, it's finally here!

Overview

Gravity Rush puts you in the high heeled boots of Kat, a young girl and newest member to the amnesia club who wakes up and remembers nothing. Upon awakening, Kat discovers that not only is she in a stranger in a strange land, she is accompanied by a mystical cat who grants her the power to manipulate gravity. Players will follow Kat on her adventure to discover her destiny.

Story

Gravity Rush is set in the floating city of Heskeville, a city under constant attack by creatures known as the Nevi who are all made up of different shapes and sizes. Kat wakes up in this strange city unable to remember who she is or how she got there. She then meets her cat Dusty who gives her the gravity powers. As you progress through the story, you meet other characters with powers such as Raven and Alias. Very little of Kat's past is explored and the story primarily focuses on the present, however parts of the game point to a later explanation probably in a sequel. The story itself is pretty patchy. One main mission will have you tackling giant Nevi and the next will have you performing fetch quests. One near the end nearly had me throwing my Vita through the wall because of the repetitiveness of that one task.

Most of the characters are somewhat one dimensional and hold very little interest and when they appear they make you think "oh, him again". However, Kat herself is a character I was surprised to warm to. Whilst her background isn't explored at all I found her to be a charming character to play as. I appreciated her as an ordinary girl under extraordinary circumstances.

Whilst the story is loose and a bit all over the place at times, it doesn't feel boring and the pay off is pretty satisfying.

The Gameplay

This is without a doubt the best part of Gravity Rush. Studio Japan really took advantage of almost everything the Vita has to offer apart from the rear touchpad. You manipulate gravity by pressing the R shoulder button, aiming with the gyro or the right joystick and then press R to fly off in you chosen direction. Pressing L returns you to normal gravity. I'm still getting a kick out of the gravity powers. Flying up as high as you can go, dropping down and stopping in mid-air surprisingly doesn't get old. To go along with altering gravity, Kat can also generate stasis fields, using gravity to allow her to surf on the ground and the sides and underbellies of Heskeville's many buildings. Kat can also engage in gravity based combat. And this is the downside to the gameplay.

Gravity Rush's combat can quite frankly be frustrating at times. Smaller to mid sized enemies are fine to handle, but it's the bigger ones that are a pain. The one move that Kat has apart from three special movies that need to be charged is her gravity kick whilst in the air, she locks onto the weak points of an enemy and hammers said weak point with her foot, but it doesn't always work. I had locked onto an enemy only to have them move at the very last second thus making me miss. It's a pain because once you miss, she just keeps going until she stops which just leaves you open to attack. When you're on the ground tackling small enemies, thats fine but the big ones don't necessarily move all that much but still manage to wipe the floor with you. It's frustrating to rarely get a shot in because your enemies either have multiple weak points that need hammering or the either move at the last second or hit you mid attack. The main problem is that there isn't another alternative to taking them down apart from hurling stuff at them using you stasis field but that move is just useless so I never used it. There's no player skill to this combat, it's just hard.

But save from the frustrating combat, Gravity Rush's open world more than makes up for it. The world of Heskeville is a floating city with a tinge of European influence, it's less Cloud City and more Paris in the sky. The city has lower levels as well as the massively tall skyscrapers. It's a rush (pardon the pun) to jump from the tallest building and fall all the way to the supports below. The world itself is pretty big considering that this is a handheld game. One mission has you travelling thousands of metres downwards during which there were no frame-rate hiccups and no slowdown. The game runs flawlessly save the drawback distances but we'll get to that. Overall, I just love exploring Heskeville.

The Graphics

Gravity Rush is a really pretty game and sports a cell shaded graphical style. Animations on Kat herself are very good and flow very well. NPC's look a bit wooden at times but this is only seen in the scarcely used motion cutscenes. Gravity Rush mainly replaces cutscenes with a very cool comic book style that moves from panel to panel when progressing. The only problem is the drawback distances when travelling to different parts of the city. Much like many open world games, as you get further away from something, it becomes less detailed and eventually disappears and vice versa, however, the cell shaded graphics do a nice job of making it look hand drawn.

The Sound

Gravity Rush has some pretty decent music to accompany it. Its main theme is memorable, the music in different parts of the city is catchy and the FX does the job well. The voice acting is mainly non-existent since the game using subtitles and comic panels to convey the dialogue.

The Multiplayer

?

The Problems

As I went into detail earlier, the biggest problem of Gravity Rush is the combat. It's simplified but in a way that makes it frustrating as there is no skill to it. You just hit the square button and hope for the best. As I said earlier, there's no trick to the combat, it's just hard. Kat can't lock on properly and the enemies will dodge right at the last second, it's a pain in the arse.

Next up is the story. The lack of Kat's background leads to believe that it'll be explained in a sequel, otherwise it's just bad story telling. The story is quite loose and you'll be playing through missions struggling to remember how you got to this point in the story. Some of the characters make random appearances and you forget about three of them quite quickly until the reappear.

Thirdly the drawback distances hold Heskeville back from looking marvellous but it's not a deal breaker.

Overall, none of these problems are deal breakers but there something that would absolutely have to be fixed for a sequel.

The Final Verdict

Gravity Rush had me glued to my Vita in a way that other games on the platform failed to do. It's about 10-12 hours long and it just kept me coming back. The world is fun to explore as you collect gems that allow you to improve Kat's abilities through leveling up, there are challenges and you can replay missions to collect gems you may have missed or just to explore or do again. Gravity Rush has it's problems which are somewhat minut save for the combat, it's biggest problem. I was aware of the unrefined combat going into Gravity Rush and I would still play through it again, but it's the one thing that keeps Gravity Rush from being the amazing game that it should be. It's certainly a unique game and is one that everyone with a Vita should play.

Overall, I give Gravity Rush an 8 out of 10

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]]>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 07:42:28 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/06/22/thewildbeard-reviews-gravity-rush#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/06/11/well-it-doesnt-look-like-a-dull-summer-ahead
Ah summer, 3 (or four if you count September) months of sunshine, heat and me almost crashing my car because of the barely dressed ladies and traditionally, the time where everyone will be outside enjoying all of that. But not me. Why? Because we have some good lookin' games coming this summer. Apart from July, I'll have to work because of the gaming dry spell.

Anyone remember last year with only Deus Ex: Human Revolution saving the summer from being a total dry spell? Man, that game was great. But I digress. This summer, there are 5 very tasty looking games headed our way: Gravity Rush, Spec Ops: The Line, Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron and Far Cry 3.

Gravity Rush

The first Vita game in what feels like ages thats worth playing (thats right Burning Skies, F you). I played the demo of this and it felt awesome. I've been waiting to get this game ever since I saw what it could do in videos last year and about 2 minutes of hands on time in January. You play as Kat, a the newest entry in the "I can't remember who I am" club who comes across a magical cat that allows her to manipulate gravity. Its a free roam world on the Vita. Ok, I don't know much of the story, but damn, its fun. In the UK, Gravity Rush is out this Wednesday, the 13th and I'll be downloading it for sure.

Spec Ops: The Line

Again, my excitement for this game stems from when it was announced to the surprisingly impressive demo I played last month. Spec Ops seems like your average 3rd person shooter but thats where it ends. Spec Ops has a really interesting premise, you play as part of a Special Forces team sent in to find out what the hell happened to a missing part of the American army only to discover that they've gone nuts and have started killing everyone in what remains of Dubai. Oh yeah, thats the other thing, Dubai is in ruins after catastrophic sand storms. It's going to be one interesting environment. Spec Ops: The Line is out in the UK on the 19th of June. And it has Nolan North.

Sleeping Dogs

"D'ya like dags?" Normally, I do not. Except small ones. But these dogs I like the sound of. Sleeping Dogs is the return of True Crime: Hong Kong which was cancelled in late 2010/early 2011 by Activision to allow them to focus on bigger franchises. Thankfully, the game was picked up by Square Enix and was given a lot more development time. You play as an ex-triad turned undercover cop sent into dismantle the Triads from the inside. Sleeping Dogs combines a mixture of martial arts free flow combat like Batman: Arkham Asylum, shooting like most games, free running more to the likes of Infamous than Assassins Creed and driving to the level of say, Need For Speed. My biggest hope is that United Front can pull it off and make it look great. Sleeping Dogs is out on the 17th of August 2012

Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron

Bah weep granah weep nini baam, the universal greeting. I've been replaying War For Cybertron in anticipation for this and it has only made it probably my favoured game for this summer. As a Transformers fan as well as many other sci-fi franchises, I've been let down by the embarrassments that are the movie games. But High Moon did it, they gave us a Transformers game we can be proud of. As Transformers fans, they understand what we want and used this develop one great game and are bringing out what I'm sure will be an even better game. You play as both Autobots and Decepticons fighting a civil war on the planet Cybertron. The Autobots are trying to escape to allow Cybertron to heal itself but in the mean time the Decepticons are engaging in a genocide against all Autobots. You'll be back in frantic battles smashing Decepticreep and Autoboob heads on the 31st of August 2012.

Far Cry 3

Man, this surprised the heck out of me at last years E3 and it's almost here. Almost. I loved Far Cry in 2004 and whilst I liked 2009's Far Cry 2, it was Far Cry in name alone. Far Cry 3 is a return to formula, a strong narrative lead and a tropical island. Players will control Jason Brody, you're average surfer dude turned killer (ok, maybe not so average) as he embarks to rescue his girlfriend and get the hell out of dodge. Far Cry 3 boasts open world gameplay and a beautiful landscape. Be sure to pick this one up on the 7th of September 2012.

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]]>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:16:40 -0700Edithttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/06/11/well-it-doesnt-look-like-a-dull-summer-ahead#disqus_threadhttp://www.ign.com/blogs/thewildbeard/2012/06/05/e3-2012-sony-press-conference
The fourth out of five big press conferences and my most anticipated one.

Sony's press conference for E3 2012 started off with a pretty cool trailer with a mix of Vita, Move and PS3 in a montage, we saw Playstation Plus related stuff in there as well as some games such as Dust 514, Sly 4, The Last Of Us, AC3, Hitman, LittleBigPlanet Karting and some Far Cry 3. Everything apart from Move in that trailer got me excited for the conference.

As the trailer finished, President and CEO Jack Tretton took to the stage to introduce this press conference. After calling Playstation fans the "most passionate fans in the world" he then went on to thank Kaz Hirai for his contributions to the Playstation brand. After this, the excitement began, announcing a new IP, Tretton then gave the stage to the one and only David Cage of Quantic Dream....

Beyond: Two Souls

David Cage went on to tell us about the new game that Quantic Dream, the developer behind 2010's Heavy Rain which is called Beyond: Two Souls. Now, I know I'm not the only one who thought "BEYOND!" when he announced this. Beyond is about what happens after you die and features new character Jodie Holmes played by actress Ellen Page.

Cage then showed us a cutscene from one scene in the game. Holmes is being interviewed by a Police officer who believes that she may be the victim of some crime and continues to ask her questions in a helpful manner but soon discovers that he's getting no-where. He spots a nasty looking scar on the back of Jodie's head and asks her if it's recent to which there is no reply, only the cup of coffee be bought her a few minutes before flying from the table into the wall by itself. Creeped out, the police officer leaves the room. Seconds later, SWAT storm the building looking for Holmes who has disappeared from the office in which was being interviewed.

The first thing you look at in this game is just how lifelike the graphics are. Remember that these are captured from a PC and are not CGI. The faces look absolutely fantastic and Jodie Holmes despite having a shaved head is the spitting image of Ellen Page. After this scene, a trailer ensues giving us an idea on what the game is going to be like.

It's unclear what exactly the story is but after Heavy Rain, I have high hopes.

No release date was given.

Playstation Allstars: Battle Royale

The worst named game finally made an appearance at E3! Chan Park, Omar Kendall and other members of Superbot entertainment were introduced to the stage by Jack Tretton to demonstrate the cross play features Battle Royale. Yes, thats right, Playstation Allstars is coming to the Vita (awesome). Two members were playing on the PS3 and two members were playing on Vita's. The Super Smash Bro's clone looks pretty damned good I have to say.

The way Playstation Allstars differs from Super Smash Bros is that you're not trying to knock an opponent out of the ring, your aim is to build up your meter to unleash finishing moves that will knock your opponents out. The first one to do this, wins. The arena's you fight in are pretty interesting as well. They'll be a mixture of two area's from two different games. In the demo we were shown Metropolis from Ratchet and Clank with featured the Hydra from the first God Of War. It was pretty funny as the Hydra was soon attacked by Captain Quark. Look up the video, it looked pretty funny with Quark hanging on for dear life as the Hydra tries to shake him off.

Then the big announcement came, two new characters: The Big Daddy from Bioshock and Nathan Drake. I actually went "YES" when they announced Drake. Tretton then came back on to announced cross save with Allstars allowing you to play it on PS3 and then pick it back up later n the Vita.

Also announced was the cross controller DLC for LittleBigPlanet. What this allows you to do is play LBP using your Vita as a controller and access new and different functions. There'll be a new story for it, new costumes and new stickers and features.

There's currently no release date for Allstars.

Playstation Plus Amped Up

Starting today, 12 new games will be live and ready for download tomorrow for Playstation Plus users. These games will be free for Plus users. However, I've seen on Twitter from @mrstraightfire that he downloaded it yesterday as part of the half price sale so does that mean you'll your money back? Some of the games free will be Infamous 2, LPB2 and Saints Row 2. Also, if you were lucky enough to be in the press conference you also got a code for 1 year free of Playstation Plus membership.

Vita

Tretton lightly touched upon Vita which is unsurprising as due to Vita's poor sales, people would undoubtably call them out to comment on it. But the good news is that the Vita will be seeing sixty brand new titles in the coming year. PS1 classics are also announced for this summer such as Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy 7, the latter of which I'll snap up. There are also going to be new apps such as Hulu Plus and Crackle.

Next was the big announcement: Call Of Duty Black Ops: Declassified. I'm excited for this, Burning Skies was awful so I'm happy that there will be a new shooter on the way relatively soon. But thats all we know for it so hopefully we'll see more in the coming days.

As if it couldn't get better for the Vita, Assassins Creed: Liberation was announced. Players will take control of a black, french female assassin for the first time ever. We got to see a cool new trailer made up of gameplay for it. There look to be city environments as well as a wooded area. This was announced with the Crystal White Vita Bundle. As of the 30th of October, players will be able to purchase this bundle with the new white Vita (which looks horrible) with a 4GB and a copy of the game. Why didn't Sony do this kind of thing in February for non-first edition bundles?!

Assassins Creed 3

Jack Tretton introduced Ubisoft's Assassins Creed creative director Alex Hutchinson to the stage to show us a never before seen part to Assassins Creed 3; naval combat. This came as a total surprise. This part of the game will be set in the Caribbean and will feature Connor dressed in Naval attire as he commands a cruiser sailing through beautiful islands and engaging opposing forces in ship-to-ship combat. This section of the game looked very, very pretty and is a real credit to the Anvil2 engine.

Also announced was a new PS3 bundle that includes a PS3, Assassins Creed 3 and all the DLC packs.

AC3 is out on the 30th of October.

Far Cry 3

Dan Hay once again took to the stage with other members of the Far Cry 3 team to show off the new co-op mode. This mode will be objective based encouraging you to work together to achieve your goals.

The PS3 will also be getting DLC first and Far Cry 3 will be available in September 2012.

Andy House and Playstation Move

Jack Tretton then have up the stage to President and group CEO Andy House who revealed the new feature to Playstation Move which uses augmented reality books called Wonderbooks (I know, I know) written by top class authors and will be developed by top class developers and animators.

The first one of these books was called Book Of Spells and is in development by the team behind Diggs Nightcrawler and is being authored by Harry Potter creator JK. Rowling. Book Of Spells will teach you how to learn spells with the Move and will allow you cast them using the Move controller as the wand. You'll then use the spells learnt to complete challenges set in the game. Completing this challenges will earn you house points. All of this ties in with JK. Rowling's Pottermore.

Introduced by Dave Raynard, Book Of Spells was demoed and wasn't too impressive. Its clear that this is aimed at kids and will probably sell quite well in the UK where the Move performs the best.

Playstation Suite

Announced last year, Playstation Suite will bring Playstation to mobile devices. Playstation content will feature on Sony based products only. Until now. Sony announced a new, non-Sony partnership that will bring Playstation content to the smart phone provider, HTC. No details were given when this would be available.

Playstation Suite is also to be renamed to Playstation Mobile.

God Of War: Ascension

Jack Tretton was back for a short time to introduce Todd Papy from Sony Santa Monica studio's to release footage from the new single player section of God Of War: Ascension. How to describe it? It's very God Of War. Kratos goes toe-to-toe with some enemies such as a Goat/Minotaur thing and some kind of creature with the body of the Cyclops and the head of an Elephant. With all this going on, Kratos is also finding himself being attacked by what seems to be the Kraken.

The Kraken destroys a bit of the dock that Kratos lands on and this gave an opportunity to show off some of the new magic in the game. Kratos appears to be in possession of some kind of amulet that allows you wind back time and rebuild structures. Kratos' climbing also looked a lot more fluid this time around. One thing I noticed was the fact that Kratos saved a civilian from being killed by a spear by merely pushing him out of the way. Does this mean that we're going to be seeing a more compassionate Kratos?

God Of War: Ascension will be released on the 12th of March 2013.

The Last Of Us

We were finally able to view gameplay from Uncharted developer Naughty Dog's new IP; The Last Of Us last night. And I'll be go to hell, it looks fantastic. The demo starts off with Joel and Ellie travelling through what remains of Pittsburgh. The ruins are lush with green plants and tree's and a good percentage of the streets are flooded.

Joel and Ellie then enter a ruined hotel and progress through. Even in its ruined state, Ellie remarks how fancy it is and asks if Joel stayed in a place like this before the infection to which Joel retorts by saying that this place was "too fancy for my blood". As they reach the upper levels of the hotel, they hear voices. Human voices. As a result, Joel's instinct is to duck down and avoid being seen. He then sneaks into a window and kills a man who's back is turned to Joel. Big mistake. Joel then attacks the man and slowly strangles him to death. The process of this is not pretty and is nowhere near as quick as Uncharted. It's slow, brutal and painful. Joel is then spotted by one of the mans companions and they soon enter a slow paced gun battle with shots being fired off carefully and conservatively. A hostage taking system is also in this game and enemies react dynamically telling you to drop their buddies. Joel begins to take them down one by one until he runs out of ammo and you hear the click of the hammer against the empty magazine.

Whats so cool is that the enemy hears this and says to you "I know that sound. I'm coming for you mothefucker!". Its at this point that Ellie yells "Hey asshole" and launches a brick into the guys moosh which gives Joel the opportunity he needs to bash the guys brains in. An encounter seconds later see's a guy strangling Joel until Ellie digs her knife in his back which leaves him rolling in pain on the floor. Joel then picks up a shotgun and fires it into the guys face at point blank range. We see his brains scatter a split second before the demo ends and it replaced with text saying "The Last Of Us".

What I noticed in the demo were indications of a scavenging system with an inventory like in Fallout. Also, there was a health system with a life bar and health packs. During the inventory sequence, Joel seemed to craft items to make weapons such as a molotov cocktail. Needless to say, I can't wait for this game.

To start off, if it wasn't for the great games they showed, I would still be cringing at Aisha Tyler and Toby Turners performances onstage here. There were more dick jokes, "girlwood" jokes and gay jokes that made last years Mr. Caffeine look good. Seriously, they were pretty bad.

Just Dance 4

Starting off the press conference was Flo-Rida performing with a bunch of dancers promoting Just Dance 4, the fourth instalment to the phantom selling series. I don't know who buys those games, but they sell. There wasn't much to marvel at here, I didn't know who the hell Flo-Rida was until Aisha Tyler introduced him after he was done singing.

After introducing the show, socks started to get blown off.

Far Cry 3

Dan Hay and Jamie Keene took to the stage to deliver us a brand new look at Far Cry 3. We'd seen Jason Brody as the hunted for about a year now and Hay informed us that now, Brody was the hunter.

The demo start was quite, umm, revealing. Starting off with Jason running his hands up a 90% naked woman's body, it was revealed that he is now part of the native warrior clan on the island fighting again Vaas and his goons. Brody then gives the people of the clan a big, courage rousing speech. The demo then cuts to Jason making his way through the jungle to emerge out onto a cliff revealing a BEAUTIFUL vista. Blue oceans, lush jungles and I even spotted a Manta Ray in the water. Brody then dives off of the cliff into the water and makes his way onto the island killing every bad guy in his path in a very violent way. A random Tiger then appears out of no-where. Seriously, watch the demo, it was brilliant.

It's very similar to what we've seen over the last year and looks damned impressive. Whats more impressive is that the demo was running on a PS3 so just imagine how good its going to look on a high end PC. Dan Hay then answered a question from a fan on Twitter asking how open the game would be. He revealed that the game will be completely open and will be set across a vast archipelago of islands complete with a new map editor.

Far Cry 3 is out this September.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist

We saw this earlier at the Microsoft press conference. However, Max Beland introduced us to Co-Op returning from Splinter Cell: Conviction. There's also going to be a new mode called Spy's vs Mercs. He showed us a new CGI story trailer showing Sam utilising the use of robots and real time mission support and stealthily infiltrating the enemy base and eliminating terrorists along the way. He then gets into the base, rescues the captive and introduces him (and the player) to the 4th Echelon.

Avengers: Battle For Earth

I'm not holding my breath for this one. What we saw is a new CGI trailer with Wolverine fighting Venom, Story and Spiderman fighting Magneto and then revealing the movie cast of the Avengers but in their comic book forms. They announced that the game would then be on the WiiU.

Rayman Legends

I can't imagine myself buying a WiiU anytime soon. There are too many games and other hardware I want to get as well as running my car etc but I have to say, what I saw was pretty impressive.

The guy demonstrating Rayman Legends on it's WiiU development kit was obnoxious as hell sure, but he made up for it with impressive gameplay and a look at just what they're going to use the WiiU for. Rayman Legends will support five player co-op and will use the WiiU controller to use each characters different abilities and to aid your fellow players get through the level. Different controllers will have different roles in the gameplay, the WiiU remote may be used to clear obstacles ahead of the characters allowing them to progress, players with the new Pro controller will probably be tasked with controlling the characters. It all looks quite creative but it's not selling the system for me so far.

The game itself looks very pretty good. I was a fan of Rayman Origins and bought it for the Vita. Fans will be pleased to know that the hand-drawn levels will return as well as new ways of how the levels will be constructed.

Rayman Origins had no release date given.

ZombiU

This is the new WiiU exclusive featuring.....zombies. I'm not very excited to see more of this. I actually groaned as the word "zombie" left Aisha's lips. A new trailer alone was unveiled showing London in the midst of the beaten cat of a setting that is a Zombie Apocalypse. The trailer was made up of slow motion shots and still motion shots that changed camera angles in real time. Graphically, it looks impressive but reminds me of Brink's animation style. Playing over the trailer was an acoustic cover of Her Majesty's national anthem which my brother thought was disrespectful to the Queens jubilee. He's young, forgive him.

Toby Turner then remarked about a British Cavalry member decapitating a zombie with his bayonet by referred to it as a "gun sword". Thats Final Fantasy 7 Toby.

Assassins Creed 3

Yes, I fist pumped the air in announcement of this. Ubisoft unveiled a stunning new CGI trailer depicting Connor moving through a Patriot camp, stealing a horse and making his way to the British lines dodging artillery and musket fire before finally reaching his target, putting an arrow in his shoulder and coming over to finish him off. Finishing the trailer was a close up shot of George Washington.

However, the next bit is my favourite bit of E3 so far: gameplay. This gameplay looked absolutely fantastic. I can't remember the last time I was this excited for a game at E3. Especially one that I've known about for the last three months. The gameplay showed off Connor running through the tree's with ease, his new movement animations and how fluid he is compared to Altair and Ezio. We also see him fighting animals and getting and selling pelts. We're then shown the new mo-cap and facial capture in a cinematic with a Patriot informing Connor of his targets location and Connor saying how he is there for the Templar alone and not to help the Patriots. So us Brits can rest easy.

We then see Connor take out a number of British troops with the rope dart, the two-handed combat and combat against classed enemies such as brutes. Connor then infiltrates the fort from behind and climbs up the cliff to get in. It's amazing how well Ubisoft have done to make Connors movements seem so natural and fluent. He can climb trees and cliffs with ease. Connor then gets into the fort, causes an explosive diversion and then gets to this target allowing us to see combat on the move as Connor easily makes short work of two guards in his way without having to stop.

This truly looks fantastic. I can't wait for this. I think it might beat The Last Of Us in being my most anticipated game this year.

Assassins Creed 3 hits on the 30th of October 2012.

Watch Dogs

The biggest surprised of E3 so far, Watch Dogs is the brand new IP from Ubisoft. From a trailer and a demo, its clear that we'll play as characters that are able manipulate the network that makes up our lives. Players will be able to access the lives and secrets of every single person in the game and if they are of use, you'll be able to exploit them.

The trailer follows a shady looking man entering a nightclub by using his phone to access the network and shut down all the phones causing a distraction so he is able to slip into the club undetected. When he is in the club, he speaks to someone that he knows and that is part of his organisation of hackers and they discuss the target. Soon after, you're able to listen into a phone conversation of an employee of your target that informs him that you are here. You quickly leave the club and see your target approaching down the street. This is where it gets cool. You hack the traffic lights and cause a car crash that your target falls victim to. A shootout then ensues and you end up killing your target and escaping.

Now the really interesting bit is that it pulls out of your character and you're placed into the shoes of another. Could this mean co-op or multiple protagonists? I guess we'll see more on the show floor.

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And remember, if you read this, nothing is true, everything is permitted.

With Microsofts press conference out of the way, the spotlight fell on EA. Lets see what they showed us...

Dead Space 3

Opening with the worst kept secret in gaming this week, EA introduced Dead Space developer Visceral to unveil gameplay from Dead Space 3. First off, they showed us a sparkly, sorry, bloody new trailer. But that was quickly done as soon as the gameplay demo started.

Visceral gave us a look at their new drop in/drop out co-op with series veteran and man with the worst job in the galaxy, Isaac Clarke and his new partner John Carter. The game is set on some kind of ice planet suffering from a Necromorph infestation. Despite the new setting, the gameplay hasn't changed much. Its a slight tweak to the Dead Space formula. However, there has been some change to the weapons. It seems like the weapon Isaac was using has a primary and secondary fire.

Another new edition was the use of cover and the fighting against human enemies. Thats going to be an interesting development.However, this looked more like Lost Planet than Dead Space. It didn't look scary so I'm a bit cautious of it right now.

Dead Space 3 launches in February 2013.

Madden NFL 2013

Cam Webber took to the stage to introduce a deeper look into the game we'd already seen a few hours before, Madden 2013. Whats new to Madden 2013 is the brand new Infinity Engine. With this new engine, EA is able to create better and more realistic physics. There will be unique animations and no movement will be the same. For example, if a player is struck by another, he can lose balance and/or focus.

Also new to Madden, is a better career mode. This career mode has some interesting RPG elements. For example, players will be able to either pick an existing Madden NFL player to use in career mode or they can customise and create their own one. Whats also cool is the use of a virtual Twitter that'll have reactions to your character as he progresses. As talked about in the Microsoft press conference, players will be able to use SmartGlass to manage their characters and teams on a PC, a tablet and smart phones. Players will also be able to update on Twitter and Facebook.

Sim City Social and Sim City

Lucy Bradshaw was next up after Madden was finished to introduce Sim City Social for Facebook. It's exactly what it sounds like, The Sims for Facebook. Whats more interesting is the new Sim City for the PC. This game will feature constructible worlds, better and newer simulations, data visualisations that allow you highlight key happenings in your world. You will also be able to specialise your city from an agricultural city to a heavy industrial city.

Perhaps the most interesting development is the introduction of multiplayer. Players will be able to participate in challenges set by friends and EA and will able to compete against their friends to see who can build the better city. For example, in the trailer we saw, one mode seemed to have a timed building challenge between two friends. Whats good is that EA will fully support this with constant updates and new challenges. Oh, and you can get Godzilla to attack your city. Awesome.

Sim City is due for release in February 2013.

Battlefield 3 Premium

We all saw this coming, but nonetheless, it looks really good. Taking loads of influence from Call Of Duty Elite, EA has made Battlefield 3 Premium, a subscription based package going for about $49.99 if I remember correctly. Buying this will give you for special packs; Back To Karkand, Armoured Kill with new armoured vehicles and modes, Close Quarters and End Game. Motorcycles will be introduced as well as 20 new weapons and 10 new vehicles. Premium will come with weapon skins, new modes and new assignments.

This is exactly what Call Of Duty is doing, but EA has a real opportunity to make it shine here. Elite doesn't work so well outside of North America and is pretty poorly executed in other parts of the world so lets hope Dice can pull it off.

The best thing about it? It's out now for Playstation 3. Xbox and PC will get it next week. Booyah.

The Old Republic

Ray Muzyka then came on from BioWare to announced new additions to the Star Wars MMO The Old Republic. New PVP warzones were announced, a new species: the Cathar, new companions such as HK-41 and a new planet home to the deadly Hutt cartel. Alongside all of this is a brand new space mission as well and a new level cap.

In July, players will be able to engage in The Old Republic for free until they reach level 15. Pretty cool.

Medal Of Honor: Warfighter

Now this new entry in the Batt-sorry, Medal Of Honor series looks very tasty indeed. You may recall in my "most looking forward to" article last month that I was intrigued but cautious by this game. Whilst I still retain that attitude, I'm please to say that I'm tempted.

Greg Goodrich took to the stage to introduce to Warfighter and it looks good. Running on the Frostbite 2 engine, we saw a demo of what I assume are Tier 1 storming a beach in Somalia to take down a band of pirates operating in the area. Medal Of Honor is once again pushing the controversy button and will be placing us in current conflicts and hot zones. As the demo goes on, the game looks noticeably better with bullets tearing up dirt and destroying cover. An impressive scene see's you hit by a snipers bullet and thrust underwater, but you brush it off your flak jacket and carry on with the assault. Enemies look much better in this game. I thought the last games enemies look really bland and quite frankly, shit.

Players will also be introduced to a new breaching system. A menu appeared with options to breach with such as a Tomahawk and a Shotgun. As the player progress, you took control of a drone sent in to clear the basement. They really showed off the shadows and lighting in this segment.

EA Sports

Madden NFL showed up introduced us to Madden NFL Social, a new social game with cross play on PC, phones and tablets. Matt Bilby from EA Sports then showed off Fifa 13 and talked about how football links people across the world and brings us together and describe Fifa with the tagline "Fifa is footballs social network". He then announced that players will be able to take all the stuff from their saves in Fifa 12 into Fifa 13. There will also be a new social side to Fifa on tablets, phones and PC alongside a new iPhone app. He then went on to announced new tweaks to the game such as the elimination of near perfect touch, new ball tactics, better AI and new dribble moves.

UFC President Dana White then took to the stage to announce that UFC has no dropped its partnership with THQ and has entered a new license with EA with a new multi-year partnership.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Matt Webster from Criterion games then took to the stage to show off the new latest entry into the Need For Speed series. Most Wanted is a brand new open world driving game similar to Burnout Paradise (ah, memories). The city will be filled full of challenges and races such as who can get the highest jumps and ultimately, who can be the most wanted. It seems like they've thankfully ditched the out of car sequences from The Run. Being an old school Burnout fan, I'm actually interested in this game. Webster then finished with the appropriate line "God Save The Queen".

Crysis 3

One word. Damn. Crysis 3 looks fantastic and this demo was running on a 360 by the looks of things so we can only imagine how good it'll look running on the PC.

Cervat Yerli introduced us to a new demo for Crysis 3 depicting Prophet running around a dam taking out C.E.L.L soldiers and just generally causing mayhem. We were shown new guns as well as the new crossbow teased in the trailers and screenshots. Yerli also announced that New York City is now the "urban rainforest".

Seriously looking forward to this. Crysis 3 will be available in February 2013